CVE-2026-49755
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in wojtekmach Req allows attacker-controlled HTTP servers to exhaust memory in a Req client via decompression-bomb response bodies.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.60%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in wojtekmach Req allows attacker-controlled HTTP servers to exhaust memory in a Req client via decompression-bomb response bodies. Req's default response pipeline includes Req.Steps.decode_body/1 and Req.Steps.decompress_body/1 in lib/req/steps.ex. decode_body/1 dispatches on the server-supplied content-type (or URL extension) and calls :zip.extract(body, [:memory]) for application/zip, :erl_tar.extract({:binary, body}, [:memory]) for application/x-tar, and :erl_tar.extract({:binary, body}, [:memory, :compressed]) for application/gzip / .tgz. Each returns the full decompressed archive contents as a [{name, bytes}] list in memory, with no per-entry or total size cap. decompress_body/1 walks the content-encoding header and chains :zlib/:brotli/:ezstd decoders, so a response advertising content-encoding: gzip, gzip, gzip inflates through multiple layers without bound. Both steps are enabled by default, no caller opt-in is required, and the attacker controls the content-type and content-encoding headers on their own server (or on any host reached via Req's automatic redirect following). A sub-megabyte response can expand to multiple gigabytes on the victim, crashing the BEAM process. This issue affects req: from 0.1.0 before 0.6.1.
- 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
- 0.60% probability · 47th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-409
- Affected
- wojtekmach/req
- Source
- 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
References
- https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-49755.htmlThird Party Advisory
- https://github.com/wojtekmach/req/commit/84977e5b1a83f26e749d55ad06e3625464af4e8dPatch
- https://github.com/wojtekmach/req/security/advisories/GHSA-655f-mp8p-96gvVendor Advisory, Exploit, Patch
- https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-49755Third Party Advisory, Patch, Mitigation
- https://github.com/wojtekmach/req/security/advisories/GHSA-655f-mp8p-96gvVendor Advisory, Exploit, Patch
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.