{"id":"CVE-2026-75758","summary":"Unbounded recursion between Inspect.List charlist rendering and List.to_string/1 error path in Elixir","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.","aliases":["EEF-CVE-2026-75758","GHSA-jf5q-v438-665c"],"modified":"2026-08-30T03:48:12.113921570Z","published":"2026-08-28T11:28:53.505Z","database_specific":{"unresolved_ranges":[{"source":"AFFECTED_FIELD","extracted_events":[{"introduced":"9718f2b90ce086ff8614d5782f4ec528495c98dd"},{"fixed":"*"}]}],"cna_assigner":"EEF","cwe_ids":["CWE-674"],"osv_generated_from":"https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/75xxx/CVE-2026-75758.json"},"references":[{"type":"WEB","url":"https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-75758.html"},{"type":"WEB","url":"https://github.com"},{"type":"WEB","url":"https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-75758"},{"type":"ADVISORY","url":"https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/75xxx/CVE-2026-75758.json"},{"type":"ADVISORY","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/security/advisories/GHSA-jf5q-v438-665c"},{"type":"ADVISORY","url":"https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-75758"},{"type":"FIX","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/0bba5887577b1e328da825bd018815fdc519685a"},{"type":"FIX","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/1eff1acffd49bdcc0d7f57ca74c1603328eed68a"},{"type":"FIX","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/5230d73968f1b4969d2a2646786fa6c71475f5cc"},{"type":"FIX","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/a983c8c043b1fbf1d95df78a29149222dac2988c"},{"type":"PACKAGE","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir"}],"affected":[{"ranges":[{"type":"GIT","repo":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir","events":[{"introduced":"3cdb3883e4e3b38e5389d98cc9429a6ca4f17143"},{"fixed":"dfe6612e546cec6557900e67651f7d21805472ef"},{"introduced":"2a9a4f2cab4e84fa76980ca2ba7a2dff3622937a"},{"fixed":"915d6dca16268e17605aaeb96ed5a1484f440703"},{"introduced":"0f9d9190741195d812f04eed5ac6a01c44d45d92"},{"fixed":"759443e724f55bf58e71c0603644e99058918d52"},{"fixed":"0bba5887577b1e328da825bd018815fdc519685a"},{"fixed":"1eff1acffd49bdcc0d7f57ca74c1603328eed68a"},{"fixed":"5230d73968f1b4969d2a2646786fa6c71475f5cc"},{"fixed":"a983c8c043b1fbf1d95df78a29149222dac2988c"}],"database_specific":{"source":["DESCRIPTION","REFERENCES"],"extracted_events":[{"introduced":"1.15.0-rc.0"},{"fixed":"1.18.5"},{"introduced":"1.19.0-rc.0"},{"fixed":"1.19.6"},{"introduced":"1.20.0-rc.0"},{"fixed":"1.20.4"}]}}],"versions":["v1.18-latest","v1.19.5","v1.19-latest","v1.20.3","v1.20-latest","main-latest","v1.20.2","v1.20.1","v1.20.0","v1.20.0-rc.6","v1.20.0-rc.5","v1.20.0-rc.4","v1.20.0-rc.3","v1.20.0-rc.2","v1.20.0-rc.1","v1.20.0-rc.0","v1.19.4","v1.19.3","v1.19.2","v1.19.1","v1.19.0","v1.19.0-rc.2","v1.19.0-rc.1","v1.19.0-rc.0","v1.18.4","v1.18.3","v1.18.2","v1.18.1","v1.18.0","v1.18.0-rc.0","v1.15.0-rc.1","v1.15.0-rc.0"],"database_specific":{"source":"https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-75758.json"}}],"schema_version":"1.9.0","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"}]}