Vulnerability · Published Sep 14, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-53717Envoy Gateway: OCI layer extraction allocates make([]byte, h.Size) from untrusted tar header
Medium 6.5
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in gateway from envoyproxy. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.7% (higher than 54% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
Envoy Gateway is an open source project for managing Envoy Proxy as a standalone or Kubernetes-based application gateway. Prior to 1.7.4 and 1.8.1, internal/wasm/imagefetcher.go follows tenant-controlled EnvoyExtensionPolicy spec.wasm[].code.image.url values to Docker or OCI Wasm layers, and extractWasmPluginBinary uses the untrusted tar-header h.Size value to allocate memory before validating the entry name or declared size. A small PAX or GNU tar header can therefore claim a multi-terabyte entry even though the surrounding LimitReader restricts only the bytes read from the stream, and no registry allowlist prevents a permitted tenant from selecting an attacker-controlled registry that the controller can reach. The allocation is attempted for every tar entry and can cause an unrecoverable Go runtime out-of-memory failure; because the custom resource persists, reconciliation repeatedly crash-loops the shared controller and causes a single-request, non-volumetric, cluster-wide control-plane denial of service. This issue is fixed in versions 1.7.4 and 1.8.1.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/envoyproxy/gateway | 1.8.1 | GHSA-h7pq-86h8-rp5x |
| Go | github.com/envoyproxy/gateway | 1.7.4 | GHSA-h7pq-86h8-rp5x |
| Go | github.com/envoyproxy/gateway | 1.7.4, 1.8.1 | GO-2026-6008 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| envoyproxy | gateway | < 1.7.4>= 1.8.0-rc.0, < 1.8.1 |
Weakness: CWE-789 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
References
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/security/advisories/GHSA-h7pq-86h8-rp5x x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/pull/9171 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/pull/9172 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/pull/9173 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/commit/5a78db82b7cf4fc5bebbeda2c50952892038a464 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/commit/96e2b750868a459ace4b8b68e6a6e4fb0152b9b7 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/commit/b4737180c7e597490c6363075c565fa8cf24eead x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/releases/tag/v1.7.4 x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/envoyproxy/gateway/releases/tag/v1.8.1 x_refsource_MISC