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.

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Fixes

Solution

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Workaround

Do not pass compress: true to WebSockAdapter.upgrade/4. Omitting this option (or setting it to false) prevents permessage-deflate from being negotiated, so the inflate path is never reached.

History

Fri, 01 May 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
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.
Title WebSocket permessage-deflate inflate has no output-size cap in bandit
First Time appeared Mtrudel
Mtrudel bandit
Weaknesses CWE-770
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:mtrudel:bandit:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Mtrudel
Mtrudel bandit
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 8.2, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}


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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: EEF

Published:

Updated: 2026-05-01T20:34:24.604Z

Reserved: 2026-04-07T12:28:54.916Z

Link: CVE-2026-39804

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-05-01T21:16:16.853

Modified: 2026-05-01T21:16:16.853

Link: CVE-2026-39804

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses