BEAM VM crash via unbounded exponent parsing
Published May 7, 2026 · Updated May 7, 2026
Resource exhaustion in Eric Meadows-Jönsson Decimal before 3.0.0 allows remote attackers to crash the BEAM VM with crafted decimals. Decimal.new/1 accepts an exponent without a bound, and arithmetic, rounding, integer conversion, comparison, or normal/XSD formatting allocates memory proportional to that exponent. Exposure requires a consuming application to accept attacker-controlled decimals and invoke one of those operations; one value can exhaust memory and terminate the runtime.
Summary
What happened
Resource exhaustion in Eric Meadows-Jönsson Decimal before 3.0.0 allows remote attackers to crash the BEAM VM with crafted decimals. Decimal.new/1 accepts an exponent without a bound, and arithmetic, rounding, integer conversion, comparison, or normal/XSD formatting allocates memory proportional to that exponent. Exposure requires a consuming application to accept attacker-controlled decimals and invoke one of those operations; one value can exhaust memory and terminate the runtime.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-32686
- Published
- May 7, 2026
- Updated
- May 7, 2026
- Vendor
- Eric Meadows-Jönsson
- Product
- Decimal
- Classifications
- CWE-400, CAPEC-130, T1499
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- May 7, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 7, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=0.1.0 <3.0.0
- Affected versionversion=bc11f4a2b6fb61fc1360a0ab4e79141bba918841 <6a523f3a73b8c9974540e21c7aa88f1258bb35ae
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- Large-exponent Decimal denial-of-service proof of conceptproof of concept · unverified
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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