CVE-2026-82760 PUBLISHED

Superlinear base62 decoding exhausts CPU and memory in AshAuthentication API key sign-in

Assigner: EEF
Reserved: 31.08.2026 Published: 17.09.2026 Updated: 17.09.2026

Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in team-alembic AshAuthentication allows an unauthenticated attacker to exhaust CPU and memory via an oversized base62 segment in a submitted API key.

AshAuthentication.Base.decode62/1 in lib/ash_authentication/base.ex splits its argument into one binary per character and folds it with charval62/2, which recomputes Integer.pow(62, index) at every position instead of accumulating by Horner's method, so cost grows roughly cubically in the input length. bindecode62/1 in the same module is quadratic through Integer.undigits/2 and Integer.digits/2. Neither function caps byte_size/1, and AshAuthentication.Strategy.ApiKey.SignInPreparation passes the underscore-separated segments of the submitted key straight into both, before any key lookup and without prior authentication. The surrounding rescue clauses catch exceptions, not CPU or memory exhaustion.

This issue affects ash_authentication: from 4.8.0 before 4.15.0 and from 5.0.0-rc.0 before 5.0.0-rc.14.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS Score: 8.2

Product Status

Vendor team-alembic
Product ash_authentication
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 4.8.0 to 4.15.0 (excl.)
  • affected from 5.0.0-rc.0 to 5.0.0-rc.14 (excl.)
Vendor team-alembic
Product ash_authentication
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from f3a53f480088419788d5c3934af3131fa9066773 to * (excl.)

Credits

  • Peter Ullrich reporter
  • James Harton remediation developer
  • Jonatan Männchen / EEF analyst

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-130 Excessive Allocation