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Uncontrolled Resource ConsumptionWeakness · CWE-400

CVE-2025-48040

MEDIUM · 6.9 CVSS v4.0 Published 2025-09-11
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
78/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in Erlang OTP ssh (ssh_sftp modules) allows Excessive Allocation, Flooding. This vulnerability is associated with program files lib/ssh/src/ssh_sftpd.erl. This issue affects OTP from OTP 17.0 before OTP 28.0.3, OTP 27.3.4.3 and OTP 26.2.5.15, corresponding to ssh from 3.0.1 before 5.3.3, 5.2.11.3 and 5.1.4.12.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-400

A single request can consume unbounded CPU, memory, or connections, so a modest amount of malicious traffic exhausts the service. The result is denial of service for everyone else. Remediation is enforcing limits, quotas, and timeouts on what any one request can use.

General guidance for the uncontrolled resource consumption class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
Authentication
X
User interaction
None
Scope
X

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

OTP 28.1+ (or OTP 27.3.4.4+, OTP 26.2.5.16+)

  1. 1. Identify your current Erlang OTP version by running 'erl -eval 'erlang:display(erlang:system_info(otp_release)), halt().' -noshell'
  2. 2. Determine if your version is affected: OTP 17.0 through OTP 28.0.3, OTP 27.3.4.3, or OTP 26.2.5.15
  3. 3. For OTP 28.x users: upgrade to OTP 28.1 or later (version higher than 28.0.3)
  4. 4. For OTP 27.x users: upgrade to OTP 27.3.4.4 or later
  5. 5. For OTP 26.x users: upgrade to OTP 26.2.5.16 or later
  6. 6. For older OTP versions (OTP 17-25): upgrade to a supported stable version (minimum OTP 26)
  7. 7. After upgrade, verify the ssh application starts correctly and test SFTP functionality
Caveat Upgrading Erlang OTP may introduce compatibility changes in other applications; test thoroughly before production deployment

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2025-48040 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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