CVE-2026-54894

HIGH

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

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

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.

Scores

CVSS v3 7.5
EPSS 0.0027
EPSS Percentile 19.1%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation poc
Automatable no
Technical Impact partial

Details

CWE
CWE-770
Status published
Products (3)
ueberauth/guardian < 2.4.1
ueberauth/guardian 0.1.0 - 2.4.1
ueberauth/guardian 7126fa433afc2563fcac0c9aa35193965f8fd5f8 - 2952657e42e6341a67e6aaad09d8f0b40ae917cb
Published Aug 01, 2026
Tracked Since Aug 02, 2026