CVE-2026-7790
Publication date 11 May 2026
Last updated 26 June 2026
Ubuntu priority
Description
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in ninenines cowlib (cow_http_te module) allows Excessive Allocation. The chunked transfer-encoding parser in cow_http_te accepts an unbounded number of hex digits in the chunk-size field. Each digit causes a bignum multiplication (Len * 16 + digit), so parsing N hex digits requires O(N²) CPU work and O(N) memory. Additionally, when input is drip-fed, the parser discards the accumulated length on each partial read and restarts from zero on resumption, raising the cost to O(N³). An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this by sending an HTTP/1.1 request with Transfer-Encoding: chunked and a very long chunk-size hex string to cause denial of service through CPU exhaustion and memory amplification. This vulnerability is associated with program file src/cow_http_te.erl and program routines cow_http_te:stream_chunked/2, cow_http_te:chunked_len/4. This issue affects cowlib: from 0.6.0 before 2.16.1.
Status
| Package | Ubuntu Release | Status |
|---|---|---|
| erlang-cowlib | 26.04 LTS resolute |
Needs evaluation
|
| 25.10 questing |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 24.04 LTS noble |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 22.04 LTS jammy |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 20.04 LTS focal |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 18.04 LTS bionic |
Needs evaluation
|
Severity score breakdown
CVSS version:
Base score
8.7 · High
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Base score
7.5 · High
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H