Medium severity · published Aug 30, 2026
CVE-2026-81319
Unsafe deserialization of decrypted terms enables node DoS in AshCloak
5.9
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Deserialization of Untrusted Data vulnerability in ash-project ash_cloak allows an attacker who can influence the bytes of an encrypted column to crash the BEAM node, by triggering unbounded atom creation or a decompression bomb during decryption. AshCloak.Calculations.Decrypt decodes the decrypted binary with Ash.Helpers.non_executable_binary_to_term/1 without the :safe option, so atoms in the payload are interned during the decode and never garbage collected, and the term format's compressed form is inflated transparently. vault.decrypt!() is the only barrier and stops tampering only for an authenticated cipher. Cloak also ships the unauthenticated AES.CTR, whose ciphertext an attacker who knows their own plaintext can XOR into any same-length payload without the key, so an ordinary read of the forged column reaches the decoder. A few hundred kilobytes of distinct atoms exhausts the atom table, or a small compressed payload inflates to gigabytes. This issue affects ash_cloak: from 0.1.0 before 0.4.0.
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 30% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
AS
ash_cloak · ash-project
0.1.0 before 0.4.0; f1595a77fdfa9bfc672f84c2f77feb9e7bf895fc before 1690f0a436efe3e7c11d70d74ff5a8ac0fdf6608 · source: vendor