CVE-2026-39804
CWE-770Published: May 1, 2026· Updated: May 5, 2026
Official Description
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in mtrudel bandit allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via memory exhaustion when WebSocket permessage-deflate compression is enabled.
'Elixir.Bandit.WebSocket.PerMessageDeflate':inflate/2 in lib/bandit/websocket/permessage_deflate.ex calls :zlib.inflate/2 with no output-size cap, then materializes the entire decompressed payload as a single binary via IO.iodata_to_binary/1. The websocket_options.max_frame_size option only bounds the on-the-wire (compressed) frame size, not the decompressed output. A high-ratio compressed frame (e.g. uniform data at ~1024:1 ratio) can stay well under any wire-size limit while forcing GiB-scale heap allocations in the connection process before any application code runs.
An unauthenticated attacker who can open a WebSocket connection can send a single such frame to exhaust the BEAM node's memory and trigger an OOM kill.
This vulnerability requires both Bandit's server-level websocket_options.compress and the per-upgrade compress: true option passed to WebSockAdapter.upgrade/4 to be enabled. Stock Phoenix and LiveView applications are not affected as they default to compress: false.
This issue affects bandit: from 0.5.9 before 1.11.0.
Technical Analysis
CVE-2026-39804 can be exploited remotely over the network without requiring physical or adjacent access, significantly expanding the attack surface for threat actors.
The vulnerability requires no privileges and no user interaction, making it a prime target for automated exploitation campaigns and worm-like propagation.
CVSS v3.1 Vector Breakdown
Exploit & PoC Resources
All References (5)
Quick Facts
Related CVEs (CWE-770)
Recommended Actions
- →Apply vendor patches immediately
- →Monitor CVE-2026-39804 in threat intel feeds
- →Review IDS/IPS signatures for exploitation attempts