CVE-2026-23943
Essential information
- Published
- 13/03/2026 19:54
- Modified
- 13/03/2026 19:54
- Author
- —
- Creator
- —
- CVSS
- 6.9 MEDIUM (v3) 6.9 MEDIUM (v4.0)
- CISA KEV
- No
- CWE
- —
- CVSS vector
-
—
—
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
CVSS metrics
- Access vector
- —
- Access complexity
- —
- Authentication
- —
- Confidentiality impact
- —
- Integrity impact
- —
- Availability impact
- —
- Exploitability
- —
- Remediation level
- —
- Report confidence
- —
- Temporal score
- —
- Attack vector
- —
- Attack complexity
- —
- Privileges required
- —
- User interaction
- —
- Scope
- —
- Confidentiality impact
- —
- Integrity impact
- —
- Availability impact
- —
- Exploit code maturity
- —
- Remediation level
- —
- Report confidence
- —
- Temporal score
- —
- Attack vector
- NETWORK
- Attack complexity
- LOW
- Attack requirements
- NONE
- Privileges required
- NONE
- User interaction
- NONE
- Confidentiality (V)
- NONE
- Confidentiality (S)
- NONE
- Integrity (V)
- NONE
- Integrity (S)
- NONE
- Availability (V)
- LOW
- Availability (S)
- NONE
- Exploit maturity
- NOT_DEFINED
Description
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Compression Bomb) vulnerability in Erlang OTP ssh (ssh_transport modules) allows Denial of Service via Resource Depletion.
The SSH transport layer advertises legacy zlib compression by default and inflates attacker-controlled payloads pre-authentication without any size limit, enabling reliable memory exhaustion DoS.
Two compression algorithms are affected:
* zlib: Activates immediately after key exchange, enabling unauthenticated attacks
* [email protected]: Activates post-authentication, enabling authenticated attacks
Each SSH packet can decompress ~255 MB from 256 KB of wire data (1029:1 amplification ratio). Multiple packets can rapidly exhaust available memory, causing OOM kills in memory-constrained environments.
This vulnerability is associated with program files lib/ssh/src/ssh_transport.erl and program routines ssh_transport:decompress/2, ssh_transport:handle_packet_part/4.
This issue affects OTP from OTP 17.0 until OTP 28.4.1, 27.3.4.9 and 26.2.5.18 corresponding to ssh from 3.0.1 until 5.5.1, 5.2.11.6 and 5.1.4.14.
NVD status
- Status
- Received — CVE has been recently published to the CVE List and has been received by the NVD.
- Source
- 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
- NVD
- View on NVD
Affected products (CPE)
| Product | CPE |
|---|---|
| erlang / otp | cpe:2.3:a:erlang:otp:17.0-28.4.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| erlang / ssh | cpe:2.3:a:erlang:ssh:3.0.1-5.5.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| erlang / ssh | cpe:2.3:a:erlang:ssh:5.2.11.6:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
| erlang / ssh | cpe:2.3:a:erlang:ssh:5.1.4.14:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |