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DEBIAN-CVE-2026-96596

MediumCVSS 5.9 / 10
Published Oct 14, 2026·Last modified Oct 15, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop') vulnerability in Erlang OTP stdlib (erl_tar module), hexpm hex_core (hex_erl_tar module), hexpm hex (mix_hex_erl_tar module) and erlang rebar3 (r3_hex_erl_tar module) allows an attacker who supplies a tar archive to cause a denial of service via a crafted GNU sparse member. When erl_tar:extract/1,2 writes a member to disk, erl_tar:stream_to_file_loop/3 reads it in chunks of 65536 bytes by default. For a GNU sparse member whose sparse map ends before its real size, erl_tar:do_sparse_read/3 matches its trailing-hole clause before its zero-length clause. After the chunk is used up, the trailing-hole clause reads zero bytes, does not advance the position, and recurses forever. A 2048-byte archive keeps the extracting process and one scheduler busy until the process is killed. The {max_size, N} option prevents this only when N is below the real size of the member. Extraction with the memory option is not affected. hex_core ships its own copy of erl_tar as hex_erl_tar, and Hex and rebar3 ship hex_core with prefixed module names (mix_hex_erl_tar and r3_hex_erl_tar). These copies contain the same code and do not call stdlib's erl_tar, so they are affected on any OTP version. OTP 28 is not affected, but an application running on OTP 28 is affected if it extracts archives through an affected version of hex_core, Hex or rebar3. This issue affects OTP from OTP 29.0 before OTP 29.1.2, corresponding to stdlib from 8.0 before 8.1.1, and rebar3 from 3.27.1 onward, and hex from 2.4.2 before 2.5.3; hex_core: from 0.14.0 before 0.20.1.

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Risk Scores
Base Score
5.9

The vulnerability requires local access to the device to be exploited. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability.

Threat Intelligence
2.1

Limited exploitation activity has been observed. Close monitoring and planned remediation are recommended.

EPSS
N/A

Probability that this vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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