CVE-2026-67229: RabbitMQ: Admin-only atom exhaustion: atomize_keys on vhost metadata

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.9 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-23 · updated 2026-10-19
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

RabbitMQ is a messaging and streaming broker. Prior to versions 3.13.15, 4.0.20, 4.1.11, 4.2.6, and 4.3.0, add_vhost/2 calls rabbit_data_coercion:atomize_keys/1 (the unsafe variant using binary_to_atom) on the vhost metadata map. The 20 MB management body limit fits ~1M+ short keys. Admin-only. An administrator importing a crafted definitions file can crash the node in a single request: a vhosts entry with ~1M unique metadata keys exhausts the atom table during import. Preconditions include administrator tag. This issue is fixed in versions 3.13.15, 4.0.20, 4.1.11, 4.2.6, and 4.3.0.

Affected products

rabbitmq-server: from 3.13.0 before 3.13.15; from 4.0.0 before 4.0.20; from 4.1.0 before 4.1.11; from 4.2.0 before 4.2.6 — fixed in 3.13.15, 4.0.20, 4.1.11, 4.2.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: rabbitmq-server 3.13.15, 4.0.20, 4.1.11, 4.2.6. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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