CVE-2026-23943Pre-auth SSH DoS via unbounded zlib inflate
- 6.9MediumCVSS base score
- 0.74%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 45% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Compression Bomb) vulnerability in Erlang OTP ssh (ssh_transport modules) allows Denial of Service via Resource Depletion. The SSH transport layer advertises legacy zlib compression by default and inflates attacker-controlled payloads pre-authentication without any size limit, enabling reliable memory exhaustion DoS. Two compression algorithms are affected: * zlib: Activates immediately after key exchange, enabling unauthenticated attacks * [email protected]: Activates post-authentication, enabling authenticated attacks Each SSH packet can decompress ~255 MB from 256 KB of wire data (1029:1 amplification ratio). Multiple packets can rapidly exhaust available memory, causing OOM kills in memory-constrained environments. This vulnerability is associated with program files lib/ssh/src/ssh_transport.erl and program routines ssh_transport:decompress/2, ssh_transport:handle_packet_part/4. This issue affects OTP from OTP 17.0 before OTP 26.2.5.18, OTP 27.3.4.9, and OTP 28.4.1, corresponding to ssh from 3.0.1 before 5.1.4.14, 5.2.11.6, and 5.5.1.
Timeline
ID reserved
By EEF
- 53 days later
· 53 days later
Published
- 8 months later
· 8 months later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| EEFCNA (assigner) | 4.0 | Medium6.9 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 4.0 | Medium6.9 | CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/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 |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.74% · top 45% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 6.9.
Affected products
What to do
Workaround: Best workaround - Disable all compression: {preferred_algorithms, [{compression, ['none']}]} Alternative mitigations (less secure): * Disable only pre-auth zlib compression (authenticated users can still exploit via [email protected]): {modify_algorithms, [{rm, [{compression, ['zlib']}]}]} * Limit concurrent sessions (reduces attack surface but does not prevent exploitation): {max_sessions, N} % Cap total concurrent sessions (default is infinity)
References
References8
- Pre-auth SSH DoS via unbounded zlib inflate (opens in a new tab)vendor-advisoryrelated
- EEF CNA record for CVE-2026-23943 (opens in a new tab)related
- OSV record EEF-CVE-2026-23943 (opens in a new tab)related
- Erlang/OTP version ordering (opens in a new tab)x_version-scheme
- Introducing commit 07b8f44 in erlang/otp (opens in a new tab)related
- Fix commit 0c1c04b in erlang/otp (opens in a new tab)patch
- Fix commit 93073c3 in erlang/otp (opens in a new tab)patch
- Fix commit 43a87b9 in erlang/otp (opens in a new tab)patch
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-11780 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-23943)Record last updated .