Is CVE-2026-54890 being actively exploited?

It is not currently in CISA's KEV catalog. Its EPSS exploitation probability is 0%.

What products does CVE-2026-54890 affect?

Tracked products affected include Erlang/OTP. Check the version you run to see whether it is affected.

How do I fix CVE-2026-54890?

Apply the vendor fix promptly. An official patch or advisory is available. Upgrade affected products to a fixed version.

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CVE-2026-54890

Q: What is CVE-2026-54890?

CVE-2026-54890 is a high-severity software vulnerability (CWE-191) with a CVSS score of 7.5. Integer Underflow (Wrap or Wraparound) vulnerability in erlang otp erlang/otp (erts modules), erlang otp erts (erts modules) allows Forced Integer Overflow, Excessive Allocation. This vulnerability is associated with program files erts/emul

HIGH severity · CVSS 7.5 · CWE-191

7.5CVSS HIGH

Summary

Integer Underflow (Wrap or Wraparound) vulnerability in erlang otp erlang/otp (erts modules), erlang otp erts (erts modules) allows Forced Integer Overflow, Excessive Allocation. This vulnerability is associated with program files erts/emulator/beam/external.c, emulator/beam/external.c. The BIT_BINARY_EXT tag (77) handler in the External Term Format (ETF) decoder accepts an encoding with both length and trailing-bits fields set to zero. The subsequent computation of the bitstring size underflows an unsigned integer, producing a value of roughly 2^64 that is then passed as a memory allocation size. The allocator aborts the entire node with a message such as "Cannot allocate 2305843009213693951 bytes of memory (of type binary)". The crash is a VM-level abort, not an Erlang-level exception. It cannot be intercepted by supervision trees, by try/catch, or by passing the [safe] option to binary_to_term/2 (which only restricts atom creation and does not perform structural validation of binary encodings). Any application that decodes ETF from untrusted sources via binary_to_term/1,2 or enif_binary_to_term() is exposed. The Erlang distribution protocol also decodes incoming terms through the same code path, but distribution is expected to run on trusted networks per the OTP Secure Coding Guidelines (DSG-011). This issue affects OTP from OTP 27.0 before OTP 29.0.4, OTP 28.5.0.4 and OTP 27.3.4.15, corresponding to erts from 15.0 before 17.0.4, 16.4.0.4 and 15.2.7.11.

Impact & exploitability

Attack vectorNetwork

Attack complexityLow

Privileges requiredNone

User interactionNone

Confidentiality impactNone

Integrity impactNone

Availability impactHigh

Exploit probability (EPSS)0%

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products we track (1)

Erlang/OTP

Recommendation

Apply the vendor fix promptly. Open any affected product above for its exact safe version.

Official patch: https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-54890.html ↗

CVE-2026-54890

Summary

Impact & exploitability

Affected products we track (1)

Recommendation

Additional information