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CVE-2026-86696EEF-CVE-2026-86696

Unbounded atom creation from unsigned LogoutResponse status codes in esaml allows atom table exhaustion

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub

Summary

The esaml Erlang library, used for SAML service provider authentication, is affected: an unauthenticated attacker can send unsigned SAML LogoutResponse messages with many distinct status codes, causing the Erlang VM's atom table to fill and crash the node that runs the application.

Summarized by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5. Verify details against the original sources.

Read the original description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in esaml in dropbox esaml allows an unauthenticated attacker to exhaust the Erlang VM atom table and crash the node via unsigned LogoutResponse messages. esaml:status_code_map/1 in src/esaml.erl maps any StatusCode value it does not recognize to an atom with list_to_atom/1 on the last colon-separated segment of the URN. esaml_sp:validate_logout_response/2 verifies a signature only when the message carries one, so an unsigned LogoutResponse posted to the single-logout endpoint reaches esaml:decode_logout_response/1 and mints one permanent atom per distinct status value. Atoms are never reclaimed and the VM caps the atom table at about one million entries, so an attacker who posts that many distinct values aborts the node. This issue affects esaml: from 0.1.0 onward.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. First seen by cve.now

Affected versions

  • handnot2/esaml

    From be692b56245071899757afa7ef47e43593d3de96 · fixed in *

  • arekinath/esaml

    From be692b56245071899757afa7ef47e43593d3de96 · fixed in *

  • esaml

    From 0.1.0 · fixed in *

  • dropbox/esaml

    From be692b56245071899757afa7ef47e43593d3de96 · fixed in *

  • esamlHex

    From 0.1.0

References 5

cna.erlef.org

osv.dev

GitHub · handnot2/esaml

GitHub · arekinath/esaml

GitHub · dropbox/esaml