CVE-2026-54894

Atom-table exhaustion denial of service in Guardian via unbounded atom creation from binary keys

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: August 1, 2026 at 06:46 PM UTC
Updated: October 23, 2026 at 10:10 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorGuardian

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.5%
SSVC
PoC

Description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in ueberauth guardian allows denial of service via unbounded atom creation from attacker-influenced binary input. Guardian.Plug.Keys derives connection and session namespace keys by passing arbitrary binaries to String.to_atom/1. base_key/1 in lib/guardian/plug/keys.ex converts any binary into the atom :"guardian_<input>", and the derived helpers claims_key/1, resource_key/1, and token_key/1 create a second atom on top of that. key_from_other/1 likewise converts a regex-captured binary through String.to_atom/1. The public specs advertise String.t() as a valid argument, so passing a string is documented usage, and higher-level entry points such as Guardian.Plug.current_token(conn, key: key) thread the caller-supplied key straight into these functions. String.to_atom/1 creates a brand-new atom for every previously unseen binary, atoms are never garbage collected, and the BEAM atom table is fixed at roughly 1,048,576 entries by default. An application that routes attacker-influenced data (a tenant identifier, header, or other request input) into a Guardian key therefore mints one permanent atom per distinct value. A modest stream of varied, unauthenticated input permanently consumes the atom table and crashes the BEAM node, taking down every application running on it. This issue affects guardian: from 0.1.0 before 2.4.1.

Affected

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

All versionsv < 2.4.10.1.07126fa433afc2563fcac0c9aa35193965f8fd5f8
Vendor states this is fixed in 2952657e42e6341a67e6aaad09d8f0b40ae917cb (fixed)
Affected range stops below 2.4.1, 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:

References (4)

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCPoCNot 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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