Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in elixir-ecto ecto allows an…

Why it is Yellow

• CVSS 8.9 high
• Remotely exploitable without logging in

References

• https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-118391.html
• https://ecto.hexdocs.pm/Ecto.Query.API.html#json_extract_path/2
• https://ecto.hexdocs.pm/Ecto.Query.API.html#splice/1
• https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/commit/cb2f03964dac324a9771f84f5088e395326e6de8
• https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/commit/d0e97d8a6e274c81c25fbf08087da8d8b9bae0ea
• https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/commit/eb03f45b999e2bf67ffae92811233eb6e56dba55
• https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/commit/eef014ad090d27d1a5b69c0e32a50eabd44ab3bb
• https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/issues/1031
• https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/issues/4470
• https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/security/advisories/GHSA-cxjx-vmm2-qr8r

Original description

Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in elixir-ecto ecto allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust memory in the application and in the database server by sending requests with distinct JSON keys or list lengths where the application interpolates them into json_extract_path/2, field[^key] or splice/1. Ecto caches prepared queries per repository in an ETS table with no size limit and no eviction. Interpolated JSON path elements become part of the query expression instead of its parameters, and splice/1 expands into one placeholder per element, so every distinct key or list length creates a new cache entry. With ecto_sql each entry is also a new prepared statement on the database connection that runs it. None of this memory is released until the processes restart. This issue affects ecto: from 3.4.0 before 3.14.3.