{"id":"UBUNTU-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. 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.","modified":"2026-09-02T16:27:46Z","published":"2026-08-28T16:18:00Z","upstream":["CVE-2026-75758"],"references":[{"type":"REPORT","url":"https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-75758"},{"type":"REPORT","url":"https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-75758"},{"type":"REPORT","url":"https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-75758.html"},{"type":"REPORT","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/0bba5887577b1e328da825bd018815fdc519685a"},{"type":"REPORT","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/1eff1acffd49bdcc0d7f57ca74c1603328eed68a"},{"type":"REPORT","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/5230d73968f1b4969d2a2646786fa6c71475f5cc"},{"type":"REPORT","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/a983c8c043b1fbf1d95df78a29149222dac2988c"},{"type":"REPORT","url":"https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/security/advisories/GHSA-jf5q-v438-665c"},{"type":"REPORT","url":"https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-75758"}],"affected":[{"package":{"name":"elixir","ecosystem":"Ubuntu:14.04:LTS","purl":"pkg:deb/ubuntu/elixir?arch=source&distro=trusty"},"ranges":[{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"0"}]}],"versions":["0.7.1-1","0.7.1-2","0.7.1-4build0.14.04.1"],"ecosystem_specific":{"binaries":[{"binary_name":"python-elixir","binary_version":"0.7.1-4build0.14.04.1"}]},"database_specific":{"source":"https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices/blob/main/osv/cve/2026/UBUNTU-CVE-2026-75758.json"}},{"package":{"name":"elixir","ecosystem":"Ubuntu:16.04:LTS","purl":"pkg:deb/ubuntu/elixir?arch=source&distro=xenial"},"ranges":[{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"0"}]}],"versions":["0.7.1-3","0.7.1-4build0.16.04.1"],"ecosystem_specific":{"binaries":[{"binary_version":"0.7.1-4build0.16.04.1","binary_name":"python-elixir"}]},"database_specific":{"source":"https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices/blob/main/osv/cve/2026/UBUNTU-CVE-2026-75758.json"}},{"package":{"name":"elixir","ecosystem":"Ubuntu:18.04:LTS","purl":"pkg:deb/ubuntu/elixir?arch=source&distro=bionic"},"ranges":[{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"0"}]}],"versions":["0.7.1-4build1"],"ecosystem_specific":{"binaries":[{"binary_name":"python-elixir","binary_version":"0.7.1-4build1"}]},"database_specific":{"source":"https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices/blob/main/osv/cve/2026/UBUNTU-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"},{"type":"Ubuntu","score":"medium"}]}