CVE-2026-7790
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in ninenines cowlib (cow_http_te module) allows Excessive Allocation.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.43%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in ninenines cowlib (cow_http_te module) allows Excessive Allocation. The chunked transfer-encoding parser in cow_http_te accepts an unbounded number of hex digits in the chunk-size field. Each digit causes a bignum multiplication (Len * 16 + digit), so parsing N hex digits requires O(N²) CPU work and O(N) memory. Additionally, when input is drip-fed, the parser discards the accumulated length on each partial read and restarts from zero on resumption, raising the cost to O(N³). An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this by sending an HTTP/1.1 request with Transfer-Encoding: chunked and a very long chunk-size hex string to cause denial of service through CPU exhaustion and memory amplification. This vulnerability is associated with program file src/cow_http_te.erl and program routines cow_http_te:stream_chunked/2, cow_http_te:chunked_len/4. This issue affects cowlib: from 0.6.0 before 2.16.1.
- CVSS 4.0
- 8.7 HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/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
- 0.43% probability · 36th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-400
- Affected
- ninenines/cowlib
- Source
- 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
References
- https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-7790.htmlThird Party Advisory
- https://github.com/ninenines/cowlib/commit/a4b8039ce8c93ab00867ef6b7e888822c09f4369Patch
- https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-7790Third Party Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.