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GHSA-hwfc-5hf4-gvr3 — otp

Fix: erlang/otp@e44d2bf

GHSA-hwfc-5hf4-gvr3 is a CWE-367 vulnerability. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.

DTLS listener crash via race condition in dtls_packet_demux causes denial of service for all sessions

Also known asEEF-CVE-2026-55950
Published
Jul 2, 2026
Updated
Aug 21, 2026
Affected
2 products
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Sep 30, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

No confirmed exploitation observed yet

  • CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
  • CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-hwfc-5hf4-gvr3.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.4%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs29th percentile — riskier than 29% of all scored CVEsHighest risk

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

Description

Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition vulnerability in Erlang/OTP ssl (dtls_packet_demux module) allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to crash all active DTLS sessions on a listener.

A DTLS server listener uses a single shared dtls_packet_demux gen_server process to route incoming UDP datagrams to the correct connection handler. When a DTLS client reconnects rapidly from the same source address and port (sending multiple ClientHello messages in quick succession), a race condition in the demux's internal gb_trees key-value store causes a {key_exists, {old, Client}} crash, terminating the demux process. Because the demux is shared across all DTLS associations on that listener, its crash immediately kills every active DTLS session, not just the attacker's.

The attack is pre-authentication: the attacker only needs to send UDP datagrams containing valid ClientHello messages from the same source IP and port before the intermediate DOWN monitor message is processed by the gen_server. No credentials, no completed handshake, and no special configuration are required, and the crash can be repeated indefinitely to create a persistent denial of service for all clients of that listener.

This vulnerability is associated with program file lib/ssl/src/dtls_packet_demux.erl.

This issue affects OTP from OTP 25.3 before OTP 29.0.3, OTP 28.5.0.3 and OTP 27.3.4.14, corresponding to ssl from 10.9 before 11.7.3, 11.6.0.3 and 11.2.12.10.

Affected Products

2 products · 6 configurations
Application
erlang\/otperlang
≥ 29.0 && < 29.0.3
range
Application
erlang\/sslerlang
≥ 11.7 && < 11.7.3
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vulnerability

  1. Detect

    Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).

  2. Fix

    Upgrade the affected component to the fixed release for GHSA-hwfc-5hf4-gvr3, or apply your distribution's backported patch — distro builds are often patched at an older version number, so check your vendor's advisory rather than the upstream version alone.

  3. Workarounds

    Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.

Frequently Asked Questions

Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition vulnerability in Erlang/OTP ssl (dtls_packet_demux module) allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to crash all active DTLS sessions on a listener. A DTLS server listener uses a single shared dtls_packet_demux gen_server process to route incoming UDP datagrams to the correct connection handler. When a DTLS client reconnects rapidly from the same source address and port (sending multiple ClientHello messages in quick succession), a race condition in the demux's internal gb_trees key-value store causes a {key_exists, {old, Client}} crash, term
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