Authenticated service disruption via unbounded SFTP handles
Published Sep 11, 2025 · Updated Sep 11, 2025
Resource exhaustion in affected Erlang/OTP SSH releases allows remote authenticated users to disrupt SFTP servers through OPENDIR requests. The ssh_sftpd.erl handler adds an Erlang VM handle for each opened directory without enforcing a per-connection limit, so OS file-descriptor limits do not constrain the growing list. An authenticated SFTP account and network access to an Erlang/OTP SSH server with SFTP enabled are required; sustained requests consume VM resources until service stability is impaired.
Summary
What happened
Resource exhaustion in affected Erlang/OTP SSH releases allows remote authenticated users to disrupt SFTP servers through OPENDIR requests. The ssh_sftpd.erl handler adds an Erlang VM handle for each opened directory without enforcing a per-connection limit, so OS file-descriptor limits do not constrain the growing list. An authenticated SFTP account and network access to an Erlang/OTP SSH server with SFTP enabled are required; sustained requests consume VM resources until service stability is impaired.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2025-48041
- Published
- Sep 11, 2025
- Updated
- Sep 11, 2025
- Vendor
- Erlang
- Product
- Erlang/OTP
- Classifications
- CWE-400, CWE-770, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Sep 11, 2025CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Sep 11, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
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- Affected versionversion=07b8f441ca711f9812fad9e9115bab3c3aa92f79 <* changes=[{"at":"5f9af63eec4657a37663828d206517828cb9f288","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"d49efa2d4fa9e6f7ee658719cd76ffe7a33c2401","status":"unaffected"}]
- Affected versionversion=17.0 <* changes=[{"at":"28.0.3","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"27.3.4.3","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"26.2.5.15","status":"unaffected"}]
- Affected versionversion=pkg:otp/[email protected] <pkg:otp/ssh@* changes=[{"at":"pkg:otp/[email protected]","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"pkg:otp/[email protected]","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"pkg:otp/[email protected]","status":"unaffected"}]
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What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
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Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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