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Medium 5.1Published Jul 27, 2026

CVE-2026-55737Heap pointer corruption via signed/unsigned mismatch in LARGE_TUPLE_EXT decoding in erts external term format decoder

Updated under an hour ago ()

Does this affect you?

It affects Erlang OTP and 1 other product. Add what you run to find out whether that includes you.

No exploitation reported and no EPSS estimate yet.

Signed to Unsigned Conversion Error and Out-of-bounds Write vulnerability in Erlang OTP erts allows an attacker who can supply a crafted Erlang external term format (ETF) binary to binary_to_term/1 to corrupt the BEAM heap pointer and crash the virtual machine. When decoding a LARGE_TUPLE_EXT term, the validation pass decoded_size() in erts/emulator/beam/external.c reads the 32-bit arity field as unsigned (get_uint32()), while the decode pass dec_term() reads the same field as a signed 32-bit integer (get_int32()) into an int. An arity wire value of 0x80000000 passes validation as 2147483648 but decodes as -2147483648, so the subsequent hp += n moves the heap allocation pointer backward. Neither pass enforces the runtime tuple-arity limit MAX_ARITYVAL. The result is an out-of-bounds heap write; in practice the VM detects an impossible heap size and aborts, denying service. The required padding is large when uncompressed but the compressed-ETF envelope shrinks it to a small payload on the wire. This issue affects OTP from OTP 25.0 before OTP 29.0.4, OTP 28.5.0.4 and OTP 27.3.4.15, corresponding to erts from 13.0 before 17.0.4, 16.4.0.4 and 15.2.7.11.

CVSS
5.1 MEDIUM (v4.0, CNA)CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-195, CWE-787
Known exploited
Not in CISA's KEV catalog
EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days)
Not loaded for this CVE
Assigned by
EEF
NVD analysis
Analyzed
Record last updated
Jul 28, 2026
First seen by InfoSec Signals
Oct 9, 2026

Affected products

Affected products
Erlang OTP
erlang:erlang/otp
from 13.0; fixed at 17.0.4, fixed at 16.4.0.4, fixed at 15.2.7.11
CNA record
erlang erlang/otp
erlang:erlang/otp
from 25.0 before 27.3.4.15; from 28.0 before 28.5.0.4; from 29.0 before 29.0.4
NVD
erlang erts
erlang:erts
from 13.0 before 15.2.7.11; from 16.0 before 16.4.0.4; from 17.0 before 17.0.4
NVD

References

References

The CVE record is authoritative. Products marked “from the name” were identified from the CNA's free-text names, not a CPE, and are matched less certainly. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.

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