---
id: CVE-2026-97853
title: >-
  Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value vulnerability in ericmj decimal
  allows Denial of Service.


  Decimal.round/3 builds the full result for the requested number of decimal
  places before the context precision (34 digits by default) …
summary: >-
  Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value vulnerability in ericmj decimal
  allows Denial of Service.


  Decimal.round/3 builds the full result for the requested number of decimal
  places before the context precision (34 digits by default) …
severity: none
cwe:
  - CWE-789
published: '2026-10-10'
updated: '2026-10-10'
sourceUpdated: '2026-10-10T20:16:47.640'
source: NVD
sourceUrl: 'https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-97853'
references:
  - url: 'https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-97853.html'
    label: 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
  - url: >-
      https://github.com/ericmj/decimal/commit/05bb73eb40ddef24eda782d905766f56a3660522
    label: 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
  - url: >-
      https://github.com/ericmj/decimal/commit/338f42c8cf6a9749ab70c5af04734c6050ca3dc6
    label: 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
  - url: >-
      https://github.com/ericmj/decimal/commit/3c90af4c3c2dfa4bb4c138760a326dd0eb91822b
    label: 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
  - url: 'https://github.com/ericmj/decimal/security/advisories/GHSA-6c27-994x-c52f'
    label: 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
  - url: 'https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-97853'
    label: 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db
tags:
  - nvd
ingestedAt: '2026-10-10T20:31:30.682Z'
---

## Overview

Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value vulnerability in ericmj decimal allows Denial of Service.

Decimal.round/3 builds the full result for the requested number of decimal places before the context precision (34 digits by default) is applied, so its cost grows with the places argument instead of with the size of the result. For positive places it appends places zero digits to the coefficient as a charlist before converting it to an integer, and for negative places it builds a charlist of -places zero digits. A single call such as Decimal.round(Decimal.new("1.5"), -50_000_000) allocates about 5.5 GB of memory, which can exhaust available memory and get the BEAM VM killed. The oldest releases instead loop once per decimal place, consuming CPU in proportion to places.

Any application that passes a user-supplied number of decimal places or scale to Decimal.round/2 or Decimal.round/3 without bounding it is exposed. The input limits added for CVE-2026-32686 do not cover the places argument.

This issue affects decimal: from 0.1.0 before 3.1.2.

## Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.