CVE-2025-48040 Malicious Key Exchange Messages may Lead to Excessive Resource Consumption
Attackers can cause excessive resource consumption in Erlang OTP SSH SFTP modules via malicious key exchange messages, leading to denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-48040?
CVE-2025-48040 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Erlang OTP, published on 11 Sep 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in Erlang OTP ssh (ssh_sftp modules) allows Excessive Allocation, Flooding. This vulnerability is associated with program files lib/ssh/src/ssh_sftpd.erl.
This issue affects OTP from OTP 17.0 before OTP 28.0.3, OTP 27.3.4.3 and OTP 26.2.5.15, corresponding to ssh from 3.0.1 before 5.3.3, 5.2.11.3 and 5.1.4.12.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-48040?
How do I fix CVE-2025-48040?
Upgrade to a fixed version.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2025-48040 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-48040 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-67278, AZL-67293, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-48040, EEF-CVE-2025-48040, GHSA-h7rg-6rjg-4cph, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-48040.