CVE-2026-42792
Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions vulnerability in Erlang OTP erts (epmd) allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to permanently terminate the Erlang Port Mapper Daemon (epmd) via connection slot exhaustion.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.43%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions vulnerability in Erlang OTP erts (epmd) allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to permanently terminate the Erlang Port Mapper Daemon (epmd) via connection slot exhaustion. The do_accept function in erts/epmd/src/epmd_srv.c calls epmd_cleanup_exit() when accept(2) returns EMFILE (per-process file descriptor limit reached) or ENFILE (system-wide file descriptor limit reached), rather than treating these as recoverable conditions. An attacker can exhaust epmd's file descriptor slots by holding many TCP connections open while periodically sending a single byte to reset the idle timeout, then causing accept(2) to return EMFILE, which kills the daemon. epmd has no per-source-IP connection cap, making the attack feasible from a single source. On Debian/Ubuntu default packaging the impact is amplified: the systemd unit inherits a low file descriptor soft limit, and repeated daemon deaths trigger systemd's start-rate-limit, permanently failing both epmd.service and epmd.socket and requiring manual operator intervention to recover. This issue affects OTP from OTP 17.0 before OTP 29.0.4, OTP 28.5.0.4 and OTP 27.3.4.15.
- CVSS 4.0
- 6.3 MEDIUMCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 0.43% probability · 37th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-755, CWE-770
- Affected
- erlang/erlang\/otp · erlang/erts
- Source
- 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
References
- https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-42792.htmlPatch, Third Party Advisory
- https://github.com/erlang/otp/commit/865d203e4a6a8f44179eced9e1428f9259e4a3bbPatch
- https://github.com/erlang/otp/security/advisories/GHSA-h6f3-hx58-xhj6Vendor Advisory
- https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-42792Patch, Third Party Advisory
- https://www.erlang.org/doc/system/versions.html#order-of-versionsRelease Notes
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.