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CVE-2026-54894Atom-table exhaustion denial of service in Guardian via unbounded atom creation from binary keys

Description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in ueberauth guardian allows denial of service via unbounded atom creation from attacker-influenced binary input. Guardian.Plug.Keys derives connection and session namespace keys by passing arbitrary binaries to String.to_atom/1. base_key/1 in lib/guardian/plug/keys.ex converts any binary into the atom :"guardian_<input>", and the derived helpers claims_key/1, resource_key/1, and token_key/1 create a second atom on top of that. key_from_other/1 likewise converts a regex-captured binary through String.to_atom/1. The public specs advertise String.t() as a valid argument, so passing a string is documented usage, and higher-level entry points such as Guardian.Plug.current_token(conn, key: key) thread the caller-supplied key straight into these functions. String.to_atom/1 creates a brand-new atom for every previously unseen binary, atoms are never garbage collected, and the BEAM atom table is fixed at roughly 1,048,576 entries by default. An application that routes attacker-influenced data (a tenant identifier, header, or other request input) into a Guardian key therefore mints one permanent atom per distinct value. A modest stream of varied, unauthenticated input permanently consumes the atom table and crashes the BEAM node, taking down every application running on it. This issue affects guardian: from 0.1.0 before 2.4.1.

Public exploit

An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. A reference of the record is tagged as an exploit. CISA's SSVC rates its exploitation: a proof of concept is public.

Show the exploits1

References tagged exploit1 reference

Timeline

  1. ID reserved

    By EEF

  2. · 46 days later

    Published

  3. · 2 days 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

CVSS scores of CVE-2026-54894, by who scored it
Scored byCVSSScoreVector
EEFCNA (assigner)4.0Medium6.9CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:H
NVDNVD · Analyzed4.0Medium6.9CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:H/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)
0.48% · top 58% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)
CISA SSVC
Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
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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: Do not derive Guardian keys from untrusted input. Use a fixed, hardcoded set of namespace keys, or validate the value against a bounded allowlist of known keys, before passing it as the :key option.

References

References4

Sources

The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.

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Record last updated .