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Deserialization of Untrusted DataWeakness · CWE-502

CVE-2026-48853

CRITICAL · 9.2 CVSS v4.0 Published 2026-06-15
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
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
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.

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-502

The application rebuilds objects from attacker-supplied serialized data, and the act of rebuilding can trigger dangerous code paths. In many runtimes this leads straight to remote code execution. The durable fix is to avoid deserializing untrusted input — or to use a strict, type-limited format with integrity checks.

General guidance for the deserialization of untrusted data 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:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/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

1.0.0

  1. Update your mix.exs file to use elixir-grpc version 1.0.0 or later by changing the grpc dependency to: {:grpc, "~> 1.0.0"}
  2. Run `mix deps.update grpc` to fetch the updated package
  3. Review your code for any usage of Elixir.GRPC.Codec.Erlpack to ensure compatibility with the updated codec
  4. Run your test suite to verify the application functions correctly after the upgrade
  5. Redeploy the updated application
Caveat Review the elixir-grpc 1.0.0 release notes for any breaking changes from 0.x versions, particularly around codec handling and API changes

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-2026-48853 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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