CVE-2026-96596

Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop') vulnerability in Erlang OTP stdlib (erl_tar module), hexpm hex_core (hex_erl_tar module), hexpm hex (mix_

Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop') vulnerability in Erlang OTP stdlib (erl_tar module), hexpm hex_core (hex_erl_tar module), hexpm hex (mix_hex_erl_tar module) and erlang rebar3 (r3_hex_erl_tar module) allows an attacker who supplies a tar archive to cause a denial of service via a crafted GNU sparse member. When erl_tar:extract/1,2 writes a member to disk, erl_tar:stream_to_file_loop/3 reads it in chunks of 65536 bytes by default. For a GNU sparse member whose sparse map ends before its real size, erl_tar:do_sparse_read/3 matches its trailing-hole clause before its zero-length clause. After the chunk is used up, the trailing-hole clause reads zero bytes, does not advance the position, and recurses forever. A 2048-byte archive keeps the extracting process and one scheduler busy until the process is killed. The {max_size, N} option prevents this only when N is below the real size of the member. Extraction with the memory option is not affected. hex_core ships its own copy of erl_tar as hex_erl_tar, and Hex and rebar3 ship hex_core with prefixed module names (mix_hex_erl_tar and r3_hex_erl_tar). These copies contain the same code and do not call stdlib's erl_tar

Description from the National Vulnerability Database, published by 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db