CyberSecBulletin
CVE-2026-48594NVD status: Modified

tesla: Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)

CVE-2026-48594 is a high-severity improper handling of highly compressed data (data amplification) vulnerability in tesla from Elixir-tesla, with a CVSS 3.1 base score of 7.5 out of 10. It can be exploited remotely over the network by an unauthenticated attacker, without any action from a user. The record lists versions 1.18.3, 340f75b5d191dc747ef7ac6365bd002d1cd55a9d as the first without the flaw, so updating tesla to one of those releases or later removes the exposure. There is no confirmed exploitation so far. EPSS estimates a 0.46% chance of exploitation within 30 days, which is low compared with other CVEs.

Next patch cycle

High severity with no evidence of exploitation so far.

What to do

  1. Update tesla to 1.18.3 or 340f75b5d191dc747ef7ac6365bd002d1cd55a9d, whichever matches your release line, or a later version.
  2. Read the advisory on github.com for workarounds and exact fixed builds.
  3. Until you can update, restrict network access to the affected service so it is not reachable from untrusted networks.

Affected products and versions

VendorProductAffected versionsFixed in
Elixir-teslatesla0.6.0 up to, but not including, 1.18.3; 5bd90bb5cf0d15e375edc2a66fa322292940fce2 up to, but not including, 340f75b5d191dc747ef7ac6365bd002d1cd55a9d1.18.3, 340f75b5d191dc747ef7ac6365bd002d1cd55a9d

Version data comes from the organisation that assigned the CVE. Confirm against the vendor advisory before deciding you are unaffected.

How the severity score breaks down

Attack vector
NetworkCan be exploited remotely over a network, including the internet.
Attack complexity
LowNo special conditions are needed; the attack works reliably.
Privileges required
NoneNo account or login is needed.
User interaction
NoneNo action by a victim is required.
Scope
UnchangedImpact stays within the vulnerable component.
Confidentiality
NoneNo data is disclosed.
Integrity
NoneNothing can be modified.
Availability
HighThe component can be taken down completely.

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H. Scored by NVD.

Scoring systemScoreSeverityScored by
CVSS 4.08.2HighCNA
CVSS 3.17.5HighNVD

Official description

Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerability in elixir-tesla tesla allows a denial of service via decompression bomb in HTTP response bodies. When Tesla.Middleware.DecompressResponse or Tesla.Middleware.Compression is included in a Tesla middleware pipeline, HTTP response bodies are decompressed eagerly with no size limit. The decompress_body/2 function in lib/tesla/middleware/compression.ex passes the entire response body to :zlib.gunzip/1 or :zlib.unzip/1 without any cap on the output size. Additionally, compression_algorithms/1 splits the content-encoding header on commas and decompress_body/2 recurses once per token, applying a decompression pass on each iteration. A server advertising content-encoding: gzip, gzip, gzip, gzip causes four recursive decompression passes, yielding exponential amplification: each gzip layer can expand its input roughly 1000x, so a payload of a few hundred bytes on the wire inflates to gigabytes of BEAM heap, exhausting memory and crashing or freezing the calling process. This issue affects tesla: from 0.6.0 before 1.18.3.

Source: the CVE record as published by its numbering authority, via NVD and CVE.org.

The underlying weakness: Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)

The product does not handle or incorrectly handles a compressed input with a very high compression ratio that produces a large output.

More Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerabilities (CWE-409)

Timeline

  1. CVE record published.
  2. CISA published its SSVC assessment (exploitation: none, automatable: no, technical impact: partial).
  3. Record last changed materially (score, affected products, status or references).

References

Third-party and government advisories

Recent Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) vulnerabilities

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