CVE-2026-68956 Affecting erlang package, versions *


Severity

Recommended
medium

Based on Ubuntu security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.38% (30th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-UBUNTU2004-ERLANG-20047031
  • published7 Oct 2026
  • disclosed22 Sept 2026

Introduced: 22 Sep 2026

NewCVE-2026-68956  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

There is no fixed version for Ubuntu:20.04 erlang.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream erlang package and not the erlang package as distributed by Ubuntu. See How to fix? for Ubuntu:20.04 relevant fixed versions and status.

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in Erlang/OTP ssh allows an authenticated remote attacker to exhaust node memory by repeatedly opening session channels that are never assigned a handler.

The "session" clause of ssh_connection:handle_msg/4 checks only minimal_remote_max_packet_size before calling setup_session/5, which unconditionally builds a #channel{} record and stores it in the ETS channel cache. The max_channels daemon option is consulted only by ssh_channel_sup:max_num_channels_not_exceeded/2, which counts supervisor children, so a channel that never gets a shell, exec, or subsystem handler is invisible to the limit and setting the option to a finite value does not mitigate the attack. RFC 4254 section 5.1 permits many session channels per connection, and each record costs only a few hundred bytes, so a single authenticated connection can accumulate channels until the node runs out of memory and the emulator terminates, affecting every application on it. No file contents, credentials, or write access are obtainable.

This issue affects OTP from OTP 18.1.2 before OTP 27.3.4.18, OTP 28.5.0.7, and OTP 29.1.1, corresponding to ssh from 4.1.1 before 5.2.11.13, 5.5.2.6, and 6.0.6. Whether OTP before OTP 18.1.2, corresponding to ssh before 4.1.1, is affected is unknown.