Hex release-age cooldown is lifted package-wide when the locked release is retired (hexpm hex)

CVE-2026-105668
HIGH 7.1

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.36 % · percentile 30 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
EEF
NVD status
Deferred

Description

Protection Mechanism Failure vulnerability in hexpm hex allows the owner of a package, or an attacker who has taken over the owner's account, to get a newly published release past the release-age cooldown. The cooldown (cooldown config, HEX_COOLDOWN) withholds versions younger than the configured age during dependency resolution. When the release of a package locked in mix.lock is retired or has a security advisory, Hex.RemoteConverger.build_cooldown_bypass/3 and Hex.RemoteConverger.unsafe_lock_bypass/1 lift the cooldown for every version of that package and of every package the locked release depends on, so that mix deps.update can move off the unsafe release. Retiring a release needs the same package owner permission as publishing one. An attacker who publishes a malicious release can retire the currently locked release, and the next mix deps.update that unlocks the package selects the new release regardless of its age. Hex.Registry.Cooldown.versions/2 checks the bypass by package name alone, so the bypass also covers packages with the same name in other repositories. Cooldown configured through an organization dependency policy is not affected. This issue affects hex: from 2.5.0 before 2.5.2.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-693 — Protection Mechanism Failure

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 4.0HIGH 7.1CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:H/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:NEEF
CVSS 4.0HIGH 7.1CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:H/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XNVD · 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db (Secondary)

European references

Affected products

ProductVersions
hexpm · hexaffected 2.5.0 < 2.5.2
hexpm · hexaffected b4e665d46be8a5f81e8cbbe4c3a67058a19cf133 < *

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD