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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.2

CVE-2026-48853 json

Remote code execution and denial of service via unsafe Erlang term deserialization in elixir-grpc/grpc

published 2026-06-15 4 mo ago modified 2026-10-25 14 d ago also EEF-CVE-2026-48853 , GHSA-grp7-v8xh-rj7h , EUVD-2026-37015

cvss
9.2
version 4.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.8%
EPSS 0.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 56%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • hex grpc 1.0.0
  • elixir-grpc grpc 1.0.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-48853 updated cvss 9.8

grpc: elixir-grpc grpc: Remote Code Execution and Denial of Service via Deserialization of Untrusted Data

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 grpc, grpc-cli, grpc-plugins, python3-grpcio
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
total
Assessed
4 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.78% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 56% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/elixir-grpc/grpc/security/advisories/GHSA-grp7-v8xh-rj7h referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 9.2 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
CNA 4.0 9.2 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

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
hex grpc
>=0.4.0, <1.0.0
1.0.0

Affected products

  • elixir-grpc grpc

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.