absinthe-graphql absinthe up to 1.10.1 system_limit allocation of resources

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in absinthe-graphql absinthe up to 1.10.1. It has been declared as problematic. Affected is the function system_limit. Executing a manipulation can lead to allocation of resources. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-42793. The attack may be launched remotely. There is no exploit available. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in absinthe-graphql absinthe up to 1.10.1. It has been declared as problematic. This vulnerability affects the function system_limit. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a allocation of resources vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-770. The product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated, in violation of the intended security policy for that actor. As an impact it is known to affect availability. CVE summarizes:

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in absinthe-graphql absinthe allows unauthenticated denial of service via atom table exhaustion when parsing attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL. Multiple Blueprint.Draft.convert/2 implementations in Absinthe's SDL language modules call String.to_atom/1 on attacker-controlled names from parsed GraphQL SDL documents, including directive names, field names, type names, and argument names. Because atoms are never garbage-collected and the BEAM atom table has a fixed limit (default 1,048,576), each unique name permanently consumes one slot. An attacker can exhaust the atom table by submitting SDL documents containing enough unique names, causing the Erlang VM to abort with system_limit and taking down the entire node. Any application that passes attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL through Absinthe's parser is exposed — for example, a schema-upload endpoint, a federation gateway that ingests remote SDL, or any developer tool that runs the parser over user-supplied documents. This issue affects absinthe: from 1.5.0 before 1.10.2.

The weakness was shared by Peter Ullrich as GHSA-qf4g-9fqq-mmm7. The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-42793 since 04/29/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is required for a successful exploitation. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1499.

Upgrading to version 1.10.2 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch dd842b938e3823f345c10416914ffab5d5536838 is able to eliminate this problem. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at EUVD (EUVD-2026-28798). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Vendor

• absinthe-graphql

Name

• absinthe

Version

• 1.10.0
• 1.10.1

Website

• Product: https://github.com/absinthe-graphql/absinthe/

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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