Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions vulnerability in Erlang OTP erts (epmd) allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to permanently terminate the Erlang Port Mapper Daemon (epmd) via connection slot exhaustion.
The do_accept function in erts/epmd/src/epmd_srv.c calls epmd_cleanup_exit() when accept(2) returns EMFILE (per-process file descriptor limit reached) or ENFILE (system-wide file descriptor limit reached), rather than treating these as recoverable conditions. An attacker can exhaust epmd's file descriptor slots by holding many TCP connections open while periodically sending a single byte to reset the idle timeout, then causing accept(2) to return EMFILE, which kills the daemon. epmd has no per-source-IP connection cap, making the attack feasible from a single source.
On Debian/Ubuntu default packaging the impact is amplified: the systemd unit inherits a low file descriptor soft limit, and repeated daemon deaths trigger systemd's start-rate-limit, permanently failing both epmd.service and epmd.socket and requiring manual operator intervention to recover.
This issue affects OTP from OTP 17.0 before OTP 29.0.4, OTP 28.5.0.4 and OTP 27.3.4.15.
CVSS Score
6.3
EPSS Score
0.004
Published
2026-07-27
Stack-based Buffer Overflow vulnerability in Erlang OTP erts (inet_drv) allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to crash the BEAM VM by sending a crafted SCTP ERROR chunk.
The sctp_parse_error_chunk function in erts/emulator/drivers/common/inet_drv.c parses SCTP ERROR chunks and writes cause codes into a fixed-size stack-allocated ErlDrvTermData spec[] array without checking bounds. A remote attacker who has established an SCTP association to a listening port can send a single crafted SCTP ERROR chunk containing enough cause codes to overflow the stack buffer, crashing the VM. The attacker can only write 16-bit values interleaved with a fixed tag, so the overflow does not provide a controlled return address, limiting exploitation to Denial of Service.
A crafted SCTP ERROR chunk may also leak bits and pieces of Erlang VM memory into the received error packet observed by the Erlang process. Such data is already readable by the user running the Erlang VM, so the disclosure scope is limited.
This issue affects OTP from OTP 17.0 before OTP 29.0.2, OTP 28.5.0.2 and OTP 27.3.4.13, corresponding to erts from 6.0 before 17.0.2, 16.4.0.2 and 15.2.7.9.
CVSS Score
8.8
EPSS Score
0.005
Published
2026-06-10