CVE-2026-82760: Superlinear base62 decoding exhausts CPU and memory in AshAuthentication API key sign-in

Severity: high (CVSS 8.2 v4.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-17 · updated 2026-09-18
Weakness: CWE-407

Description

Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in team-alembic AshAuthentication allows an unauthenticated attacker to exhaust CPU and memory via an oversized base62 segment in a submitted API key. AshAuthentication.Base.decode62/1 in lib/ash_authentication/base.ex splits its argument into one binary per character and folds it with charval62/2, which recomputes Integer.pow(62, index) at every position instead of accumulating by Horner's method, so cost grows roughly cubically in the input length. bindecode62/1 in the same module is quadratic through Integer.undigits/2 and Integer.digits/2. Neither function caps byte_size/1, and AshAuthentication.Strategy.ApiKey.SignInPreparation passes the underscore-separated segments of the submitted key straight into both, before any key lookup and without prior authentication. The surrounding rescue clauses catch exceptions, not CPU or memory exhaustion. This issue affects ash_authentication: from 4.8.0 before 4.15.0 and from 5.0.0-rc.0 before 5.0.0-rc.14.

Affected products

team-alembic ash_authentication: from 4.8.0 before 4.15.0; from 5.0.0-rc.0 before 5.0.0-rc.14 — fixed in 4.15.0, 5.0.0-rc.14

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: team-alembic ash_authentication 4.15.0, 5.0.0-rc.14. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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