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CVE-2026-97853GHSA-6c27-994x-c52f

Unbounded allocation in decimal Decimal.round/3 driven by the places argument enables DoS

ericmj decimal
CVSS
6.9Medium
ExploitationNo known exploitationNot in CISA KEV, which does not prove it is unexploitedCISA KEV
Exploit odds (EPSS)0.14%Chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days, higher than 2% of CVEs. Scored 23 Oct 2026FIRST EPSS
Fixed in3.1.2Fixed versionCVE List
Published10 Oct 2026Updated 15 Oct 2026CVE List

What fixes it

A fixed version on one release line is not the upgrade target for every line. Check your exact version and any vendor backports.

Description

Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value vulnerability in ericmj decimal allows Denial of Service.

Decimal.round/3 builds the full result for the requested number of decimal places before the context precision (34 digits by default) is applied, so its cost grows with the places argument instead of with the size of the result. For positive places it appends places zero digits to the coefficient as a charlist before converting it to an integer, and for negative places it builds a charlist of -places zero digits. A single call such as Decimal.round(Decimal.new("1.5"), -50_000_000) allocates about 5.5 GB of memory, which can exhaust available memory and get the BEAM VM killed. The oldest releases instead loop once per decimal place, consuming CPU in proportion to places.

Any application that passes a user-supplied number of decimal places or scale to Decimal.round/2 or Decimal.round/3 without bounding it is exposed. The input limits added for CVE-2026-32686 do not cover the places argument.

This issue affects decimal: from 0.1.0 before 3.1.2.

Text from GitHub Advisory Database

Affected versions 3

  • decimalaffected: 0.1.0 before 3.1.2CVE List
  • decimalaffected: 05bb73eb40ddef24eda782d905766f56a3660522 and laterCVE List
  • decimal, erlang>= 0.1.0, < 3.1.2GitHub

References 6