Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-770 — CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

CAPEC

CVSS 4.0 Score

8.2

HIGH

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Vulnerability description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in absinthe-graphql absinthe allows unauthenticated denial of service via atom table exhaustion when parsing attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL.

Multiple Blueprint.Draft.convert/2 implementations in Absinthe's SDL language modules call String.to_atom/1 on attacker-controlled names from parsed GraphQL SDL documents, including directive names, field names, type names, and argument names. Because atoms are never garbage-collected and the BEAM atom table has a fixed limit (default 1,048,576), each unique name permanently consumes one slot. An attacker can exhaust the atom table by submitting SDL documents containing enough unique names, causing the Erlang VM to abort with system_limit and taking down the entire node.

Any application that passes attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL through Absinthe's parser is exposed — for example, a schema-upload endpoint, a federation gateway that ingests remote SDL, or any developer tool that runs the parser over user-supplied documents.

This issue affects absinthe: from 1.5.0 before 1.10.2.

Affected

pkg:hex/absinthe

Module Source File Routine
Absinthe.Language.DirectiveDefinition lib/absinthe/language/directive_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.DirectiveDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.EnumTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/enum_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.EnumTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.FieldDefinition lib/absinthe/language/field_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.FieldDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.InputObjectTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/input_object_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.InputObjectTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.InputValueDefinition lib/absinthe/language/input_value_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.InputValueDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.InterfaceTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/interface_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.InterfaceTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.ObjectTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/object_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.ObjectTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.ScalarTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/scalar_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.ScalarTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.UnionTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/union_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.UnionTypeDefinition.convert/2
Status Type Version Changes / Fixed in
affected semver ⓘ 1.5.0 < 1.10.2

pkg:github/absinthe-graphql/absinthe

Module Source File Routine
Absinthe.Language.DirectiveDefinition lib/absinthe/language/directive_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.DirectiveDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.EnumTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/enum_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.EnumTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.FieldDefinition lib/absinthe/language/field_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.FieldDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.InputObjectTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/input_object_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.InputObjectTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.InputValueDefinition lib/absinthe/language/input_value_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.InputValueDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.InterfaceTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/interface_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.InterfaceTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.ObjectTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/object_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.ObjectTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.ScalarTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/scalar_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.ScalarTypeDefinition.convert/2
Absinthe.Language.UnionTypeDefinition lib/absinthe/language/union_type_definition.ex Absinthe.Blueprint.Draft.Absinthe.Language.UnionTypeDefinition.convert/2
Status Type Version Changes / Fixed in
affected git ⓘ d0eae77645 < dd842b938e

References

Credits

  • Finder: Peter Ullrich
  • Remediation developer: Curtis Schiewek

CVE record as JSON:  GET /cves/CVE-2026-42793.json
OSV record as JSON:  GET /osv/EEF-CVE-2026-42793.json