Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in plug_project plug allows denial of service via unbounded buffer accumulation in multipart header parsing. plug_multipart in src/plug_multipart.erl is a fork of the cow_multipart module from ninenines cowboy (CVE-2026-8466). The same unbounded accumulation pattern is present in 'Elixir.Plug.Conn':read_part_headers/2 in lib/plug/conn.ex: it accumulates incoming request bytes into a growing binary with no upper-bound check. When plug_multipart:parse_headers/2 returns more or {more, Buffer}, the function reads up to 64 KB from the underlying socket and recurses with the enlarged buffer. There is no equivalent of the byte_size(acc) > length guard present in the sibling function read_part_body/8. An unauthenticated attacker can send a multipart/form-data request whose body never yields a complete header section — for example, a body that never contains the advertised boundary delimiter, or one whose header lines never contain \r\n\r\n — and force the server process to accumulate memory linearly with the bytes the protocol layer is willing to deliver. A handful of concurrent such uploads is sufficient to exhaust BEAM memory. This issue affects plug from 1.4.0 before 1.15.4, 1.16.3, 1.17.1, 1.18.2, and 1.19.2.
| Métrique | Valeur | Interprétation |
|---|---|---|
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AV (Vecteur d'Attaque)
Attack Vector
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Network (N)
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Exploit possible à distance via réseau (HTTP, API, etc.) |
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AC (Complexité d'Attaque)
Attack Complexity
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Low (L)
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Peu de conditions requises pour exploiter |
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PR (Privilèges Requis)
Privileges Required
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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 |
Plug: Unbounded buffer accumulation in multipart header parsing causes denial of service
Unbounded buffer accumulation in multipart header parsing causes denial of service in plug