CVE-2026-32689

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.

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.

Summary

An unauthenticated denial-of-service vulnerability in Phoenix's long-poll transport allows a remote client to allocate a large amount of memory with a HTTP request. A handful of concurrent requests can be sufficient to let the node run out of memory.

See also https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-32689.html.

Details

The unoptimised code path exists on the application/x-ndjson POST handling in the LongPoll transport. The endpoint requires only a session token, which any client can obtain by issuing a GET to the same URL with a matching Origin header, so exploitation is unauthenticated.

Impact

Anyone who runs a LiveView app with a public Longpoll socket or uses a Phoenix.Socket with longpoll option. Longpoll has been enabled for newly generated Phoenix projects since Phoenix 1.7.11.

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.

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.

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.

Workarounds

Disable the longpoll transport on all Phoenix.Socket declarations, including the LiveView /live socket, by removing or setting longpoll: false. Note that this prevents clients that cannot use WebSockets from connecting.

Configurations

A Phoenix.Socket must be configured with the longpoll option enabled. Phoenix LiveView applications enable the longpoll transport by default via the /live socket.

Summary

An unauthenticated denial-of-service vulnerability in Phoenix's long-poll transport allows a remote client to allocate a large amount of memory with a HTTP request. A handful of concurrent requests can be sufficient to let the node run out of memory.

See also https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-32689.html.

Details

The unoptimised code path exists on the application/x-ndjson POST handling in the LongPoll transport. The endpoint requires only a session token, which any client can obtain by issuing a GET to the same URL with a matching Origin header, so exploitation is unauthenticated.

Impact

Anyone who runs a LiveView app with a public Longpoll socket or uses a Phoenix.Socket with longpoll option. Longpoll has been enabled for newly generated Phoenix projects since Phoenix 1.7.11.