Resource exhaustion via unbounded mirror-response processing
Published Oct 12, 2026 · Updated Oct 12, 2026
Resource exhaustion in Hex before 2.5.2 allows remote attackers to stop Mix or fill disk through malicious mirror responses. Hex.HTTP.request/5 buffers and gunzips responses without size limits before authenticity checks, while documentation extraction also lacks output limits. Exploitation requires fetching through an attacker-controlled configured mirror; ordinary repo.hex.pm HTTPS fetches are unaffected unless TLS verification is broken, and no package code execution is required.
Summary
What happened
Resource exhaustion in Hex before 2.5.2 allows remote attackers to stop Mix or fill disk through malicious mirror responses. Hex.HTTP.request/5 buffers and gunzips responses without size limits before authenticity checks, while documentation extraction also lacks output limits. Exploitation requires fetching through an attacker-controlled configured mirror; ordinary repo.hex.pm HTTPS fetches are unaffected unless TLS verification is broken, and no package code execution is required.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-96618
- Published
- Oct 12, 2026
- Updated
- Oct 12, 2026
- Vendor
- Six Colors AB
- Product
- Hex
- Classifications
- CWE-770, CWE-409, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Oct 12, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Oct 12, 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=0.11.2 <2.5.2
- Affected versionversion=51ea632424fb6ea8765148f96dc25dfeb526b1f8 <* changes=[{"at":"bb5189eade682c5fc3f98d9725973a7beb4e1deb","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"08956100a8283ba500a123e5539ac64d5d7e91d8","status":"unaffected"}]
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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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.
Activity data is delayed. The latest report is Sep 28, 2026.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
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Technologies
Your stack
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