CVE-2026-78228
MEDIUM 5.9 PoC AVAILABLEUncontrolled Recursion vulnerability in ash-project ash_oban allows a user who can drive a trigger's on_error action to fail on the final attempt to exhaust worker CPU and memory, denying service. The generated worker's atomic handle_error/4 runs the trigger's on_error action on a job's final attempt inside a rescue that, when the action itself raises, calls handle_error/4 again with the same job. The job's attempt still equals max_attempts, so it re-enters the same clause and re-runs the failing action, with no exit. Any deterministic on_error failure (a data-layer outage, a misconfigured action, or a record the action rejects) loops forever; because the recursive call is not in tail position, each iteration retains a formatted stacktrace and the process heap grows without bound while the failing statement is re-issued against the data layer until the runtime kills the worker. This issue affects ash_oban: from 0.8.0-rc.1 before 0.8.14.
Public exploit or PoC code exists. Modeled probability is still low, but the barrier to attack is reduced — watch closely.
Exploitation likelihood
0.1%chance of exploitation in 30 days · 3rd percentile
Impact if exploited
5.9CVSS 4.0 · MEDIUM
- ConfidentialityNone
- IntegrityNone
- AvailabilityHigh
What an attacker needs
- ⚠Access: Requires local access to the host
- ✓Privileges: No account or privileges required
- ✓User interaction: No user interaction needed
- ✓Complexity: No special conditions — reliably repeatable
- ⚠Requirements: Specific conditions must be present
✓ lowers the bar for an attacker · ⚠ raises it
Proof of concept & exploit code
- reference https://github.com/ash-project/ash_oban/security/advisories/GHSA-94p7-498r-mrhp
- github-search Search GitHub for public PoC repos
Test against your own equipment
curl -s https://vulnpedia.com/cve/CVE-2026-78228/poc.jsonMachine-readable PoC index for this CVE (for automation).Listed for defensive triage, patch verification, and authorized testing on systems you own. Machine-readable: /cve/CVE-2026-78228/poc.json
Weakness (CWE)
- CWE-674: Uncontrolled Recursion
CVSS vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
All CVSS metrics
- MEDIUM 5.9 v4.0 · CNA Primary
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N - MEDIUM 5.9 v4.0 · NVD Secondary
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X