UBUNTU-CVE-2026-104635 (CVE-2026-104635)
Vulnerability from osv_ubuntu – Published: 2026-10-13 00:00 – Updated: 2026-10-13 00:00 – Source websiteUncontrolled Recursion vulnerability in Protobuf.JSON.Decode in elixir-protobuf protobuf allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to crash the decoding process via a deeply nested JSON document. Any application that decodes attacker-supplied JSON with Protobuf.JSON.decode/3, Protobuf.JSON.decode!/3, or Protobuf.JSON.from_decoded/3 into a schema that contains a self-referential or cyclic message type is affected. In lib/protobuf/json/decode.ex, the embedded-message clause of decode_singular/3 recurses into internal_from_json_data/3 once per nesting level without incrementing or checking the decoder's depth counter. The depth guard increase_depth_and_maybe_throw/1 covers only the Google.Protobuf.ListValue and Google.Protobuf.Struct clauses, so the recursion_limit option has no effect on user-defined message types. Each nesting level allocates a stack frame and heap objects, and a sufficiently deep document exhausts the memory of the decoding process. Confidentiality and integrity are not affected. This issue affects protobuf: from 0.8.0 before 0.17.1.
{
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"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:Pro:18.04:LTS",
"name": "protobuf",
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"3.0.0-9ubuntu5",
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"package": {
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"name": "protobuf",
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"3.6.1.3-2ubuntu5.2",
"3.6.1.3-2ubuntu5.2+esm2",
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"ecosystem_specific": {
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"binary_name": "elpa-protobuf-mode",
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"aliases": [],
"details": "Uncontrolled Recursion vulnerability in Protobuf.JSON.Decode in elixir-protobuf protobuf allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to crash the decoding process via a deeply nested JSON document. Any application that decodes attacker-supplied JSON with Protobuf.JSON.decode/3, Protobuf.JSON.decode!/3, or Protobuf.JSON.from_decoded/3 into a schema that contains a self-referential or cyclic message type is affected. In lib/protobuf/json/decode.ex, the embedded-message clause of decode_singular/3 recurses into internal_from_json_data/3 once per nesting level without incrementing or checking the decoder\u0027s depth counter. The depth guard increase_depth_and_maybe_throw/1 covers only the Google.Protobuf.ListValue and Google.Protobuf.Struct clauses, so the recursion_limit option has no effect on user-defined message types. Each nesting level allocates a stack frame and heap objects, and a sufficiently deep document exhausts the memory of the decoding process. Confidentiality and integrity are not affected. This issue affects protobuf: from 0.8.0 before 0.17.1.",
"id": "UBUNTU-CVE-2026-104635",
"modified": "2026-10-13T00:00:00Z",
"published": "2026-10-13T00:00:00Z",
"references": [
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-104635"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-104635"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-104635.html"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://github.com/elixir-protobuf/protobuf/commit/b0a1d4eaffaf50012fa71a8e931a47cf252d0370"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://github.com/elixir-protobuf/protobuf/commit/e9432ad1c4099511905353cebcececa3a1f7c3ff"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://github.com/elixir-protobuf/protobuf/security/advisories/GHSA-m497-c2h9-rvw6"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-104635"
}
],
"related": [],
"schema_version": "1.7.0",
"severity": [
{
"score": "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",
"type": "CVSS_V4"
},
{
"score": "medium",
"type": "Ubuntu"
}
],
"upstream": [
"CVE-2026-104635"
],
"withdrawn": "2026-10-21T20:23:52Z"
}
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Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
Vulnerability timeline
Sightings and recorded dates, grouped by day · UTC
How durations are calculated
Following the VTEM framework (Black Hat USA 2015), time to patch starts when the vendor or a coordinator was informed, total time to patch at discovery, and disclosure to patch at public disclosure; vendor response time runs from the report to its acknowledgement. Time to exploit and time unpatched start at the earliest discovery or report, falling back to public disclosure. Unpatched time ends at the first recorded patch, or the calculation time when no patch is recorded. Exploitation to patch shows the interval between those two events; a published proof of concept is a public exploit, not exploitation.
Each result shows its source dates. A negative interval means the end event came first; when date-only inputs leave the order open, the result says so. Date-only inputs are approximate. The earliest evidence wins: KEV report dates and sightings are labelled as such. Records describing another vulnerability are listed but never calculated from, and a PoC alone does not establish exploitation. Missing patch evidence does not prove that no patch exists. Filters below change the event list only.
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Related by attack behaviour
Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.