CVE-2026-42793

/// Technical description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in absinthe-graphql absinthe allows unauthenticated denial of service via atom table exhaustion when parsing attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL.

Multiple Blueprint.Draft.convert/2 implementations in Absinthe's SDL language modules call String.to_atom/1 on attacker-controlled names from parsed GraphQL SDL documents, including directive names, field names, type names, and argument names. Because atoms are never garbage-collected and the BEAM atom table has a fixed limit (default 1,048,576), each unique name permanently consumes one slot. An attacker can exhaust the atom table by submitting SDL documents containing enough unique names, causing the Erlang VM to abort with system_limit and taking down the entire node.

Any application that passes attacker-controlled GraphQL SDL through Absinthe's parser is exposed — for example, a schema-upload endpoint, a federation gateway that ingests remote SDL, or any developer tool that

/// Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

/// References