Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in elixir-plug plug_cowboy allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via atom table exhaustion. Plug.Cowboy.Conn.conn/1 in lib/plug/cowboy/conn.ex calls String.to_atom/1 on the value returned by :cowboy_req.scheme/1. For HTTP/2 connections, cowlib passes the client-supplied :scheme pseudo-header value through verbatim without validation. Each unique value permanently allocates a new entry in the BEAM atom table. Since atoms are never garbage-collected and the atom table has a fixed limit (default 1,048,576), an unauthenticated attacker can exhaust the table by sending HTTP/2 requests with unique :scheme values, causing the Erlang VM to abort with system_limit and taking down the entire node. This vulnerability does not affect HTTP/1.1, where cowboy derives the scheme from the listener type rather than from a client-supplied header. This issue affects plug_cowboy: from 2.0.0 before 2.8.1.
History

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in elixir-plug plug_cowboy allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via atom table exhaustion. Plug.Cowboy.Conn.conn/1 in lib/plug/cowboy/conn.ex calls String.to_atom/1 on the value returned by :cowboy_req.scheme/1. For HTTP/2 connections, cowlib passes the client-supplied :scheme pseudo-header value through verbatim without validation. Each unique value permanently allocates a new entry in the BEAM atom table. Since atoms are never garbage-collected and the atom table has a fixed limit (default 1,048,576), an unauthenticated attacker can exhaust the table by sending HTTP/2 requests with unique :scheme values, causing the Erlang VM to abort with system_limit and taking down the entire node. This vulnerability does not affect HTTP/1.1, where cowboy derives the scheme from the listener type rather than from a client-supplied header. This issue affects plug_cowboy: from 2.0.0 before 2.8.1.
Title Atom table exhaustion via HTTP/2 :scheme pseudo-header in plug_cowboy
First Time appeared Elixir-plug
Elixir-plug plug Cowboy
Weaknesses CWE-770
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:elixir-plug:plug_cowboy:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Elixir-plug
Elixir-plug plug Cowboy
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 8.7, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}


cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: EEF

Published: 2026-04-27T13:45:35.160Z

Updated: 2026-04-27T14:55:05.241Z

Reserved: 2026-03-13T09:12:14.475Z

Link: CVE-2026-32688

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-04-27T14:16:47.340

Modified: 2026-04-27T14:16:47.340

Link: CVE-2026-32688

cve-icon Redhat

No data.