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CVE-2026-48854: Unbounded request body accumulation causes memory exhaustion in elixir-grpc/grpc

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.7 v4.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-06-15 · updated 2026-10-25
• Weakness: CWE-770

Description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in elixir-grpc grpc allows unauthenticated attackers to exhaust the BEAM's memory and crash the server by streaming a large or slow-trickle unary request body. 'Elixir.GRPC.Server.Adapters.Cowboy.Handler':read_full_body/3 (lib/grpc/server/adapters/cowboy/handler.ex) accumulates every received chunk into a single growing binary with no size cap. Additionally, when the client omits the grpc-timeout header, the per-chunk read timeout resolves to :infinity, allowing a slow-trickle client to keep the connection alive indefinitely while memory grows. A single connection is sufficient to exhaust server memory and crash the node. This issue affects grpc: from 0.3.0-alpha.2 before 1.0.0.

Affected products

• elixir-grpc grpc: from 0.3.0-alpha.2 before 1.0.0 — fixed in 1.0.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: elixir-grpc grpc 1.0.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-48854.html
• https://github.com/elixir-grpc/grpc/commit/49e18c3ec6bb9afe2f712caad3dbab5c56a68a00
• https://github.com/elixir-grpc/grpc/commit/d1abe70a6cad6dac4a3f8235d883d7c896989560
• https://github.com/elixir-grpc/grpc/security/advisories/GHSA-q8gf-9rvj-gmgj
• https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-48854
• https://github.com/elixir-grpc/grpc/security/advisories/GHSA-q8gf-9rvj-gmgj

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