Vulnerability · Published Jun 15, 2026 · Assigned by EEF
CVE-2026-48853Remote code execution and denial of service via unsafe Erlang term deserialization in elixir-grpc/grpc
Critical 9.2
In plain English
A critical-severity unsafe deserialization in grpc from elixir-grpc. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.8% (higher than 56% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
Deserialization of Untrusted Data and Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerabilities in elixir-grpc grpc allow unauthenticated attackers to crash the BEAM node via atom table exhaustion and, when a decoded term flows into a call site that invokes it, achieve remote code execution on the server. 'Elixir.GRPC.Codec.Erlpack':decode/2 (lib/grpc/codec/erlpack.ex) calls :erlang.binary_to_term/1 on the raw gRPC message body without the :safe option, no size bound, and no type guard. Any unauthenticated peer that sends a request with Content-Type: application/grpc+erlpack can send a crafted payload that mints arbitrary new atoms (which are never garbage-collected, exhausting the bounded atom table and crashing the VM) or that encodes a fun term which, if applied anywhere downstream, executes attacker-controlled code inside the server process. This issue affects grpc: from 0.4.0 before 1.0.0.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | grpc | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-48853 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | grpc | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-48853 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | grpc | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-48853 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | grpc | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-48853 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | grpc | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-48853 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| elixir-grpc | grpc | 0.4.0 – before 1.0.0 |
| elixir-grpc | grpc | 25bcc569fe2cc4478531a6c546c923205fc751c9 – before 272a97a5ea1b46af1819f14a831fcf35fc91f992 |
Weakness: CWE-502, CWE-770 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N