{"id":"ALPINE-CVE-2026-75758","details":"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.\n\nInspect.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.\n\nBelow 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.\n\nThis 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.","modified":"2026-11-03T06:33:03.901398545Z","published":"2026-08-28T16:18:25.277Z","upstream":["CVE-2026-75758"],"references":[{"type":"ADVISORY","url":"https://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2026-75758"}],"affected":[{"package":{"name":"elixir","ecosystem":"Alpine:v3.24","purl":"pkg:apk/alpine/elixir?arch=source"},"ranges":[{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"0"},{"fixed":"1.19.6-r0"}]}],"ecosystem_specific":{},"database_specific":{"source":"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/alpine/ALPINE-CVE-2026-75758.json"}}],"schema_version":"1.9.2","severity":[{"type":"CVSS_V4","score":"CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/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"}]}