CVE-2026-78228

Unbounded handle_error recursion enables denial of service in AshOban triggers

MEDIUM
5.9
CVSS Score
Published: August 30, 2026 at 11:51 AM UTC
Updated: September 1, 2026 at 09:31 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorAshOban

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Severity
MEDIUM5.9
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.2%
SSVC
PoC

Description

Uncontrolled Recursion vulnerability in ash-project ash_oban allows a user who can drive a trigger's on_error action to fail on the final attempt to exhaust worker CPU and memory, denying service. The generated worker's atomic handle_error/4 runs the trigger's on_error action on a job's final attempt inside a rescue that, when the action itself raises, calls handle_error/4 again with the same job. The job's attempt still equals max_attempts, so it re-enters the same clause and re-runs the failing action, with no exit. Any deterministic on_error failure (a data-layer outage, a misconfigured action, or a record the action rejects) loops forever; because the recursive call is not in tail position, each iteration retains a formatted stacktrace and the process heap grows without bound while the failing statement is re-issued against the data layer until the runtime kills the worker. This issue affects ash_oban: from 0.8.0-rc.1 before 0.8.14.

Affected

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

0.8.0-rc.1 ≤ v < 0.8.140.8.0-rc.15d117ed2006df7277561c69dbfd39281da6ace9f
Vendor states this is fixed in 851cd0e76ed882bf736fc48d10f96d037e26b5f0 (fixed)
Affected range stops below 0.8.14, 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

SSVCPoCNot automatablePartial impact

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

CVSS

5.9MEDIUMEEF
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusDEFERRED
CWE
CWE-674

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