CVE-2026-59250

Megaco flex scanner buffer overflow via oversized property parm name

HIGH
8.3
CVSS Score
Published: July 27, 2026 at 03:25 PM UTC
Updated: October 24, 2026 at 01:10 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorErlang /otp

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Severity
HIGH8.3
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.8%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

Classic buffer overflow in the Erlang/OTP megaco flex scanner C driver allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to corrupt the driver's memory (and potentially achieve remote code execution or a denial-of-service crash) by sending a single text-encoded H.248/Megaco message containing an oversized property parm name. When tokenizing a Local/Remote descriptor, mfs_load_property_groups extracts the attacker-controlled property name (bounded only by the message length) and, when no value follows, formats it into a fixed 512-byte error_msg field of the MfsErlDrvData struct using an unchecked sprintf call. Names longer than roughly 452 bytes overflow into the immediately following struct fields (text_buf, text_ptr, term_spec, term_spec_size, term_spec_index), overwriting live pointers and counters with attacker-chosen bytes. Subsequent scanner code writes and frees through the corrupted pointers, producing arbitrary write and arbitrary free primitives inside the BEAM VM process, which can be leveraged for remote code execution. On builds compiled with _FORTIFY_SOURCE the overflow is detected at runtime and terminates the process with SIGABRT, resulting in denial of service. The overflow occurs in the flex scanner before any grammar or Megaco-level authentication processing, so exploitation requires only network reachability to the megaco transport port on a node configured with {scanner, flex}. This vulnerability is associated with program files lib/megaco/src/flex/megaco_flex_scanner_drv.flex.src and program routines mfs_load_property_groups. This issue affects OTP from OTP 17.0 until OTP 29.0.4, 28.5.0.4, and 27.3.4.15 corresponding to megaco from 3.17.1 until 4.9.1, 4.8.3.1, and 4.7.2.2. Versions prior to OTP 17.0 are also affected but are not listed because the OTP version scheme is only defined from OTP 17.0 onwards.

Affected

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

All versions17.028.029.03.17.14.84.984adefa331c4159d432d22840663c38f155cd4c1
Vendor states this is fixed in 8704c8f550a11ed5f825e3c011ecb03565b79c4f (fixed)
Affected range stops below 27.3.4.15, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 28.5.0.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 29.0.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 4.7.2.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 4.8.3.1, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 4.9.1, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Vendor states this is fixed in 17.0 (unknown)
Vendor states this is fixed in 3.17.1 (unknown)

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

8.3HIGHEEF
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusAWAITING ANALYSIS
CWE
CWE-120CWE-787

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