Skip to content
fr Sign in
5.9 Medium

CVE-2026-96596 Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop') vulnerability in Erlang OTP stdlib (erl_tar module), hexpm…

Description

Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop') vulnerability in Erlang OTP stdlib (erl_tar module), hexpm hex_core (hex_erl_tar module), hexpm hex (mix_hex_erl_tar module) and erlang rebar3 (r3_hex_erl_tar module) allows an attacker who supplies a tar archive to cause a denial of service via a crafted GNU sparse member. When erl_tar:extract/1,2 writes a member to disk, erl_tar:stream_to_file_loop/3 reads it in chunks of 65536 bytes by default. For a GNU sparse member whose sparse map ends before its real size, erl_tar:do_sparse_read/3 matches its trailing-hole clause before its zero-length clause. After the chunk is used up, the trailing-hole clause reads zero bytes, does not advance the position, and recurses forever. A 2048-byte archive keeps the extracting process and one scheduler busy until the process is killed. The {max_size, N} option prevents this only when N is below the real size of the member. Extraction with the memory option is not affected. hex_core ships its own copy of erl_tar as hex_erl_tar, and Hex and rebar3 ship hex_core with prefixed module names (mix_hex_erl_tar and r3_hex_erl_tar). These copies contain the same code and do not call stdlib's erl_tar, so they are affected on any OTP version. OTP 28 is not affected, but an application running on OTP 28 is affected if it extracts archives through an affected version of hex_core, Hex or rebar3. This issue affects OTP from OTP 29.0 before OTP 29.1.2, corresponding to rebar3 from 3.27.1 before 3.28.0, and stdlib from 8.0 before 8.1.1, and hex from 2.4.2 before 2.5.3; hex_core: from 0.14.0 before 0.20.1.

Affected products and versions

Product Affected versions Fixed in
otp Versions not published
rebar3 Versions not published
hex Versions not published
hex_core Versions not published

References

Timeline

  1. Published
  2. Last modified

Other CVEs of otp

The 64 CVEs of otp →
CVE-2026-105236 Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in the ssl application in Erlang/OTP allows a client that holds a… 6.3 Medium CVE-2026-94200 Improper Validation of Consistency within Input vulnerability in Erlang OTP ssl (tls_handshake_1_3, ssl_handshake and… 8.2 High CVE-2026-65634 Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the Erlang/OTP asn1 OBJECT IDENTIFIER decoder allows a remote unauthenticated… 8.2 High CVE-2026-68956 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in Erlang/OTP ssh allows an authenticated remote… 7.1 High
Track this CVE