Unbounded SAML message decompression in esaml allows memory exhaustion
CVE-2026-93471 · EEF-CVE-2026-93471 · published 22 Oct 2026
How serious is it
- Severity: high, CVSS score 8.7 out of 10.
- No exploit prediction (EPSS) score yet.
- Not on the CISA list of exploited vulnerabilities.
- No public exploit in Exploit-DB.
Is your app affected by CVE-2026-93471?
Paste this prompt into Claude Code, Cursor or any AI coding tool: it runs a free Shippable scan of your project and fixes what it finds. Built with Lovable, Bolt or v0? Scan your live app. Or upload your package file.
Who is affected
esaml(Hex) >= 0.1.0
How to check
- Look for
esamlin your lockfile and compare its version with the range above. - Or paste your lockfile into the checker: it lists every package with a known vulnerability, this one included.
How to fix
Copies a prompt for Claude Code, Cursor or Codex: it checks your lockfiles for this and upgrades it.
- No fixed version of
esamlyet. Replace or remove it, or apply the workaround in the advisory below. - If a vulnerable version was live, check your logs and rotate the secrets that server could read.
The advisory
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.
Check your whole app
Dependencies are only half of it. Free and read-only: before you push, run npx shippable-dev scan localhost:3000 in your project folder, no account needed. For your live app, you prove it's yours with a one-line tag first.
References
- cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-93471.html
- github.com/handnot2/esaml/commit/deeb84378d5c82153b470e99d24f77c38afca14a
- github.com/arekinath/esaml/commit/deeb84378d5c82153b470e99d24f77c38afca14a
- github.com/dropbox/esaml/commit/deeb84378d5c82153b470e99d24f77c38afca14a
- hex.pm/packages/esaml
- osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-93471
Merged from OSV, CVE List. Last updated 1 Nov 2026. All vulnerabilities · RSS · JSON