CVE-2026-81638

Improper Handling of Alternate Encoding vulnerability in ash-project ash double entry allows an attacker to submit several distinct string spellings of the same identifier.

AshDoubleEntry.ULID renders a 128-bit ULID as 26 Crockford base-32 characters, but the first character encodes only 3 bits, so canonical values are 0 to 7. decode/1 in lib/ulid.ex masks the first character to its low 3 bits and valid?/1 accepts all 32 characters in that position, so 0..., 8..., G... and R... decode to the identical 16-byte value and resolve to the same row. When the type is exposed as a public ID over an HTTP or API boundary, an attacker-supplied ID can be spelled differently from the record it actually reads or writes, desynchronizing or bypassing string-level checks such as idempotency and deduplication keys, deny-lists, audit correlation, or signatures computed over the submitted ID.

This issue affects ash double entry: from 0.1.0 before 1.0.19.

Reachable only when an application exposes AshDoubleEntry.ULID as a public identifier over an HTTP or API boundary and performs string-level checks on the submitted ID (idempotency or deduplication keys, deny-lists, audit correlation, or signatures) rather than treating the value as opaque.