CVE-2026-42793

Atom table exhaustion via attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL names in absinthe

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: May 8, 2026 at 03:42 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 10:48 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorAbsinthe

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.6%
SSVC
No known 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.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

1.5.0 ≤ v < 1.10.21.5.0 < v < 1.10.21.5.0d0eae7764520d4e8e5dfff619068c0de911aec33
Vendor states this is fixed in dd842b938e3823f345c10416914ffab5d5536838 (fixed)
Affected range stops below 1.10.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusANALYZED
CWE
CWE-770

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