elixir-lang Elixir 1.15.0-rc.0/1.19.0-rc.0/1.20.0-rc.0 Inspect.List inspect.ex inspect/List.to_string/List.to_charlist recursion

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in elixir-lang Elixir 1.15.0-rc.0/1.19.0-rc.0/1.20.0-rc.0. It has been classified as problematic. This vulnerability affects the function inspect/List.to_string/List.to_charlist of the file lib/elixir/lib/inspect.ex of the component Inspect.List. This manipulation of the argument list causes recursion. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-75758. The attack can be initiated remotely. There is not any exploit available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability has been found in elixir-lang Elixir 1.15.0-rc.0/1.19.0-rc.0/1.20.0-rc.0 and classified as problematic. Affected by this vulnerability is the function inspect/List.to_string/List.to_charlist of the file lib/elixir/lib/inspect.ex of the component Inspect.List. The manipulation of the argument list with an unknown input leads to a recursion vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-674. The product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack. As an impact it is known to affect availability. The summary by CVE is:

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.

It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-75758 since 08/19/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be launched remotely. Technical details of the vulnerability are known, but there is no available exploit. The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1499 according to MITRE ATT&CK.

Upgrading to version 1.18.5, 1.19.6 or 1.20.4 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• elixir-lang

Name

• Elixir

Version

• 1.15.0-rc.0
• 1.19.0-rc.0
• 1.20.0-rc.0

Website

• Product: https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/

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