Skip to content
Heist/ feed
Back to feed
High

Long-poll NDJSON body splitting causes unbounded memory allocation in Phoenix

Type: advisorySources: OSV

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in phoenixframework phoenix allows a denial of service via the long-poll transport's NDJSON body handling. In 'Elixir.Phoenix.Transports.LongPoll':publish/4, when a POST request is received with Content-Type: application/x-ndjson, the request body is split on newline characters using String.split/2 with no limit on the number of resulting segments. An attacker can send a body consisting entirely of newline bytes, causing a 1:1 amplification into a list of empty binaries — a 1 MB body produces approximately one million list elements, an 8 MB body approximately 8.4 million. Each element is then walked by Enum.map, materializing another list of the same size. This exhausts BEAM memory and schedulers, crashing the node and terminating all active sessions. A session token required to reach the vulnerable endpoint is freely obtainable by any client via an unauthenticated GET request to the same URL with a matching Origin header, making this attack effectively unauthenticated. This issue affects phoenix: from 1.7.0 before 1.7.22 and 1.8.6.

Products
Not specified
Affected versions
Not specified
Fixed versions
Not specified
CVEs
CVE-2026-32689
Confirmed fixed CVEs
Not specified
Updated in this feed
8 Nov 2026, 02:18 UTC · Revision 1

Source evidence

Long-poll NDJSON body splitting causes unbounded memory allocation in Phoenix

core-osv · Original source

Published 5 May 2026, 15:17 UTC

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in phoenixframework phoenix allows a denial of service via the long-poll transport's NDJSON body handling. In 'Elixir.Phoenix.Transports.LongPoll':publish/4, when a POST request is received with Content-Type: application/x-ndjson, the request body is split on newline characters using String.split/2 with no limit on the number of resulting segments. An attacker can send a body consisting entirely of newline bytes, causing a 1:1 amplification into a list of empty binaries — a 1 MB body produces approximately one million list elements, an 8 MB body approximately 8.4 million. Each element is then walked by Enum.map, materializing another list of the same size. This exhausts BEAM memory and schedulers, crashing the node and terminating all active sessions. A session token required to reach the vulnerable endpoint is freely obtainable by any client via an unauthenticated GET request to the same URL with a matching Origin header, making this attack effectively unauthenticated. This issue affects phoenix: from 1.7.0 before 1.7.22 and 1.8.6.

osv:CVE-2026-32689
Complete source record
{
  "id": "91dca02f9bd0f1cf92e085e2b3405d4a8cb9b6a12270753a58d9710c8e993d7a",
  "url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-32689",
  "method": "structured",
  "payload": {
    "kind": "advisory",
    "title": "Long-poll NDJSON body splitting causes unbounded memory allocation in Phoenix",
    "summary": "Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in phoenixframework phoenix allows a denial of service via the long-poll transport's NDJSON body handling. In 'Elixir.Phoenix.Transports.LongPoll':publish/4, when a POST request is received with Content-Type: application/x-ndjson, the request body is split on newline characters using String.split/2 with no limit on the number of resulting segments. An attacker can send a body consisting entirely of newline bytes, causing a 1:1 amplification into a list of empty binaries — a 1 MB body produces approximately one million list elements, an 8 MB body approximately 8.4 million. Each element is then walked by Enum.map, materializing another list of the same size. This exhausts BEAM memory and schedulers, crashing the node and terminating all active sessions. A session token required to reach the vulnerable endpoint is freely obtainable by any client via an unauthenticated GET request to the same URL with a matching Origin header, making this attack effectively unauthenticated. This issue affects phoenix: from 1.7.0 before 1.7.22 and 1.8.6.",
    "evidence": "osv:CVE-2026-32689",
    "products": [],
    "severity": "high",
    "structured": {
      "id": "CVE-2026-32689",
      "aliases": [
        "CVE-2026-32689",
        "EEF-CVE-2026-32689",
        "GHSA-628h-q48j-jr6q"
      ],
      "metrics": [
        {
          "type": "CVSS_V4",
          "score": "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"
        }
      ],
      "affected": [
        {
          "ranges": [
            {
              "repo": "https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix",
              "type": "GIT",
              "events": [
                {
                  "introduced": "2674c6ea30634667f9b09966b90269393b445953"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "1a67c61ff9ce0a7711662ac7354861917a7c80f7"
                },
                {
                  "introduced": "e702e9e38f9a85b6438663e3e57a876b08af79dd"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "7b9cb38d60d72e62797043a7c9cce264d5f3cc98"
                },
                {
                  "introduced": "f9d3c8b75a72fbcf5ce2765a3cdbc9c82ca80609"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "ddcdadb7de1132d630bbbe56f975e66f85f36416"
                },
                {
                  "fixed": "912ea181fd247c21dbcc49fb97d0053b947d81bf"
                }
              ],
              "database_specific": {
                "extracted_events": [
                  {
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "introduced": "2674c6ea30634667f9b09966b90269393b445953"
                      },
                      {
                        "fixed": "1a67c61ff9ce0a7711662ac7354861917a7c80f7"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "AFFECTED_FIELD",
                    "strategy": "ChangesAt"
                  },
                  {
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "introduced": "1.7.0"
                      },
                      {
                        "fixed": "1.7.22"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "AFFECTED_FIELD",
                    "strategy": "StandardRange"
                  },
                  {
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "introduced": "1.8.0"
                      },
                      {
                        "fixed": "1.8.6"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "AFFECTED_FIELD",
                    "strategy": "StandardRange"
                  },
                  {
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "fixed": "1a67c61ff9ce0a7711662ac7354861917a7c80f7"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "REFERENCES_COMMIT"
                  },
                  {
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "fixed": "912ea181fd247c21dbcc49fb97d0053b947d81bf"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "REFERENCES_COMMIT"
                  }
                ]
              }
            }
          ],
          "versions": [
            "v1.8.5",
            "v1.8.4",
            "v1.8.3",
            "v1.8.2",
            "v1.8.1",
            "v1.8.0",
            "v1.7.20",
            "v1.7.19",
            "v1.7.18",
            "v1.7.16",
            "v1.7.15",
            "v1.7.14",
            "v1.7.13",
            "v1.7.12",
            "v1.7.11",
            "v1.7.10",
            "v1.7.9",
            "v1.7.8",
            "v1.7.7",
            "v1.7.6",
            "v1.7.5",
            "v1.7.4",
            "v1.7.3",
            "v1.7.2",
            "v1.7.1",
            "v1.7.0"
          ],
          "database_specific": {
            "source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2026-32689.json"
          }
        }
      ],
      "modified": "2026-10-28T02:30:52.798492511Z",
      "provider": "osv",
      "references": [
        "https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-32689.html",
        "https://github.com",
        "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-32689",
        "https://repo.hex.pm",
        "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/32xxx/CVE-2026-32689.json",
        "https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/security/advisories/GHSA-628h-q48j-jr6q",
        "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-32689",
        "https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/commit/1a67c61ff9ce0a7711662ac7354861917a7c80f7",
        "https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/commit/912ea181fd247c21dbcc49fb97d0053b947d81bf",
        "https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix"
      ],
      "provider_metadata": {
        "cwe_ids": [
          "CWE-770"
        ],
        "cna_assigner": "EEF",
        "osv_generated_from": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/32xxx/CVE-2026-32689.json"
      }
    },
    "related_cves": [
      {
        "value": "CVE-2026-32689",
        "evidence": "/id"
      }
    ],
    "security_relevant": true,
    "severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
  },
  "source_id": "core-osv",
  "document_id": 521715,
  "published_at": "2026-05-05T15:17:30.664+00:00"
}