Description
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) in esaml_binding in dropbox esaml allows an unauthenticated attacker to exhaust server memory and crash the Erlang VM via a crafted compressed SAMLResponse.

esaml_binding:decode_response/2 base64-decodes the attacker-supplied SAMLResponse, inflates it with zlib:unzip/1 with no bound on the output, then converts the result to a charlist with binary_to_list/1 before parsing. This runs on the SAML consume (ACS) and single-logout endpoints, which accept unauthenticated requests by design, and it runs before any signature check. A small deflate stream reaches a compression ratio near 1000 to 1, so a request body of tens of kilobytes inflates to hundreds of megabytes and then to several gigabytes of list heap, so a few requests exhaust memory and take the node down.

This issue affects esaml: from 0.1.0 onward.
Published: 2026-10-22
Score: 8.7 High
EPSS: < 1% Very Low
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

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Remediation

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History

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) in esaml_binding in dropbox esaml allows an unauthenticated attacker to exhaust server memory and crash the Erlang VM via a crafted compressed SAMLResponse. esaml_binding:decode_response/2 base64-decodes the attacker-supplied SAMLResponse, inflates it with zlib:unzip/1 with no bound on the output, then converts the result to a charlist with binary_to_list/1 before parsing. This runs on the SAML consume (ACS) and single-logout endpoints, which accept unauthenticated requests by design, and it runs before any signature check. A small deflate stream reaches a compression ratio near 1000 to 1, so a request body of tens of kilobytes inflates to hundreds of megabytes and then to several gigabytes of list heap, so a few requests exhaust memory and take the node down. This issue affects esaml: from 0.1.0 onward.
Title Unbounded SAML message decompression in esaml allows memory exhaustion
First Time appeared Arekinath
Arekinath esaml
Dropbox
Dropbox esaml
Handnot2
Handnot2 esaml
Weaknesses CWE-409
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:arekinath:esaml:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
cpe:2.3:a:dropbox:esaml:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
cpe:2.3:a:handnot2:esaml:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Arekinath
Arekinath esaml
Dropbox
Dropbox esaml
Handnot2
Handnot2 esaml
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 8.7, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}


cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: EEF

Published:

Updated: 2026-10-22T06:59:24.029Z

Reserved: 2026-10-06T08:45:01.518Z

Link: CVE-2026-93471

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-10-22T09:17:16.827

Modified: 2026-10-22T09:17:16.827

Link: CVE-2026-93471

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-10-22T08:45:02Z

Weaknesses