Uncontrolled Recursion vulnerability in the Elixir standard library allows an attacker who controls a list passed to inspect/1, List.to_string/1, or List.to_charlist/1 to exhaust a BEAM node's memory. Inspect.List's charlist branch in lib/elixir/lib/inspect.ex classifies a list as a charlist using List.ascii_printable?/2, which examines only the first :printable_limit (4096 by default) elements, and then calls IO.chardata_to_string/1 on the whole term. A list whose printable prefix exceeds that limit but which contains a later element that is not a code point (an atom, an out-of-range integer, or an improper tail) is therefore mis-classified, and the conversion raises ArgumentError. That conversion runs inside List.to_string/1, whose rescue clause builds its message by interpolating inspect(list), which re-enters the same branch and raises again. The nested inspection is an argument to raise, so the recursion is not in tail position and every level is retained: the process stack grows monotonically while each cycle re-walks the list, until the process is killed by max_heap_size or, by default, the node runs out of memory. List.to_charlist/1 has the same rescue shape. Below the printable limit the inner inspect/1 sees the invalid element within its counter and renders the list in ordinary bracket form, so a single ArgumentError is raised and no recursion occurs. This issue affects elixir: from 1.15.0-rc.0 before 1.18.5, from 1.19.0-rc.0 before 1.19.6, and from 1.20.0-rc.0 before 1.20.4.
| Métrique | Valeur | Interprétation |
|---|---|---|
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AV (Vecteur d'Attaque)
Attack Vector
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Local (L)
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Exploit nécessite un accès local au système |
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AC (Complexité d'Attaque)
Attack Complexity
|
Low (L)
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Peu de conditions requises pour exploiter |
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PR (Privilèges Requis)
Privileges Required
|
None (N)
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Aucune authentification requise |
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UI (Interaction Utilisateur)
User Interaction
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None (N)
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Aucune interaction utilisateur nécessaire |
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S (Périmètre)
Scope
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Unchanged (U)
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Impact reste dans le périmètre du composant compromis |
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C (Impact Confidentialité)
Confidentiality Impact
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None (N)
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Aucune divulgation d'informations |
|
I (Impact Intégrité)
Integrity Impact
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None (N)
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Aucune modification de données possible |
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A (Impact Disponibilité)
Availability Impact
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High (H)
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Interruption totale du service possible |
Unbounded recursion between Inspect.List charlist rendering and List.to_string/1 error path in Elixir