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.
Metrics
Affected Vendors & Products
References
History
Fri, 08 May 2026 17:30:00 +0000
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| Metrics |
ssvc
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Fri, 08 May 2026 16:00:00 +0000
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| Description | 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. | |
| Title | Atom table exhaustion via attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL names in absinthe | |
| First Time appeared |
Absinthe-graphql
Absinthe-graphql absinthe |
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| Weaknesses | CWE-770 | |
| CPEs | cpe:2.3:a:absinthe-graphql:absinthe:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | |
| Vendors & Products |
Absinthe-graphql
Absinthe-graphql absinthe |
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| References |
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| Metrics |
cvssV4_0
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: EEF
Published: 2026-05-08T15:42:46.101Z
Updated: 2026-05-09T04:18:26.630Z
Reserved: 2026-04-29T18:06:33.251Z
Link: CVE-2026-42793
Updated: 2026-05-08T16:09:07.595Z
Status : Received
Published: 2026-05-08T16:16:12.550
Modified: 2026-05-08T16:16:12.550
Link: CVE-2026-42793
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