CVE-2026-55734

HIGH

guardian atom exhaustion in Guardian.Permissions.encode_permissions!/1

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

Description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in ueberauth guardian (Guardian.Permissions module) allows a denial of service via BEAM atom-table exhaustion. This vulnerability is associated with program file lib/guardian/permissions.ex and program routines 'Elixir.Guardian.Permissions':encode_permissions!/1, 'Elixir.Guardian.Permissions':encode_permissions_into_claims!/2, 'Elixir.Guardian.Permissions':do_encode_permissions!/2. The Guardian.Permissions mixin installs a public encode_permissions!/1 function on every module that does use Guardian.Permissions. For each key of the supplied map, encode_permissions!/1 calls String.to_atom(to_string(k)) before any validation runs. The integer-value clause of do_encode_permissions!/2 then short-circuits straight to encoding without validating the key against the configured permission set, so a key with an integer value is interned as a fresh atom with no exception raised. Atoms are never garbage collected and the BEAM atom table is a fixed-size resource (default roughly 1,048,576 entries), so each unique attacker-chosen key permanently consumes one slot. An attacker who can influence a permission map that reaches encode_permissions!/1 (for example a permissions map read from a request body and passed into token issuance via encode_permissions_into_claims!/2) can mint an unbounded number of atoms and exhaust the atom table, crashing the entire BEAM node and every service running on it. The sibling decode_permissions/1 is not affected because it skips keys absent from the configured permission set. This issue affects guardian: from 2.0.0 before 2.4.1.

Scores

CVSS v3 7.5
EPSS 0.0029
EPSS Percentile 20.8%
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 (2)
ueberauth/guardian 2.0.0 - 2.4.1 (2 CPE variants)
ueberauth/guardian b7a6128ca4d0ffb7f7df5219dd982304ff9d6802 - 8d4efbfc352d30f5fcfc75a4d69a795b0e472724
Published Aug 01, 2026
Tracked Since Aug 02, 2026