grpc gzip decompression bomb in GRPC.Compressor.Gzip.decompress/1

Summary

Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in elixir-grpc grpc (GRPC.Compressor.Gzip, GRPC.Message modules) allows a denial of service via a gzip decompression bomb. This vulnerability is associated with program files lib/grpc/compressor/gzip.ex, lib/grpc/message.ex and program routines 'Elixir.GRPC.Compressor.Gzip':decompress/1, 'Elixir.GRPC.Message':from_data/2. 'Elixir.GRPC.Compressor.Gzip':decompress/1 calls :zlib.gunzip/1 directly on attacker-controlled bytes with no decompressed-size limit, ratio check, or incremental decoding. Because this module is the registered gzip GRPC.Compressor implementation, it is invoked automatically whenever an incoming gRPC frame carries the grpc-encoding: gzip header. :zlib.gunzip/1 allocates the entire decompressed result as a single binary, so a small highly compressible payload (for example a few kilobytes of zeros, which gzip compresses at roughly 1000:1) expands to multiple gigabytes inside a single call. The max_receive_message_length limit is enforced only against the already-decompressed message, so it provides no protection. An unauthenticated remote peer can send a single crafted frame to exhaust the BEAM node's heap and trigger an out-of-memory kill. This issue affects grpc: from 0.4.0 before 1.0.0.

Timeline

1. Jun 15, 2026, 9:55 PM UTCCVE published
2. Jun 16, 2026, 2:42 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial

3. Jun 17, 2026, 4:46 AM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• grpc

  From 0.4.0 · fixed in 1.0.0

• elixir-grpc/grpc

  Version range not reported

References 4