CVE-2026-42793
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in absinthe-graphql absinthe allows unauthenticated denial of service via atom table exhaustion when parsing attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.61%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in absinthe-graphql absinthe allows unauthenticated denial of service via atom table exhaustion when parsing attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL. Multiple Blueprint.Draft.convert/2 implementations in Absinthe's SDL language modules call String.to_atom/1 on attacker-controlled names from parsed GraphQL SDL documents, including directive names, field names, type names, and argument names. Because atoms are never garbage-collected and the BEAM atom table has a fixed limit (default 1,048,576), each unique name permanently consumes one slot. An attacker can exhaust the atom table by submitting SDL documents containing enough unique names, causing the Erlang VM to abort with system_limit and taking down the entire node. Any application that passes attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL through Absinthe's parser is exposed — for example, a schema-upload endpoint, a federation gateway that ingests remote SDL, or any developer tool that runs the parser over user-supplied documents. This issue affects absinthe: from 1.5.0 before 1.10.2.
- CVSS 4.0
- 8.2 HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/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
- 0.61% probability · 47th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-770
- Affected
- absinthe-graphql/absinthe
- Source
- 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
References
- https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-42793.htmlThird Party Advisory
- https://github.com/absinthe-graphql/absinthe/commit/dd842b938e3823f345c10416914ffab5d5536838Patch
- https://github.com/absinthe-graphql/absinthe/security/advisories/GHSA-qf4g-9fqq-mmm7Exploit, Vendor Advisory
- https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-42793Third Party Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.