Vulnerability · Published Feb 8, 2023 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2023-25151DoS vulnerability for high cardinality metrics in opentelemetry-go-contrib
High 7.5
In plain English
A high-severity uncontrolled resource consumption in opentelemetry-go-contrib from open-telemetry. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 1.0% (higher than 62% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
opentelemetry-go-contrib is a collection of extensions for OpenTelemetry-Go. The v0.38.0 release of `go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp` uses the `httpconv.ServerRequest` function to annotate metric measurements for the `http.server.request_content_length`, `http.server.response_content_length`, and `http.server.duration` instruments. The `ServerRequest` function sets the `http.target` attribute value to be the whole request URI (including the query string)[^1]. The metric instruments do not "forget" previous measurement attributes when `cumulative` temporality is used, this means the cardinality of the measurements allocated is directly correlated with the unique URIs handled. If the query string is constantly random, this will result in a constant increase in memory allocation that can be used in a denial-of-service attack. This issue has been addressed in version 0.39.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/github.com/astaxie/beego/otelbeego | 0.39.0 | GHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh |
| Go | go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp | 0.39.0 | GHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh |
| Go | go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp | 0.39.0 | GO-2023-1546 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | golang-opentelemetry-contrib | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-25151 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | golang-opentelemetry-contrib | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-25151 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | golang-opentelemetry-contrib | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2023-25151 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| open-telemetry | opentelemetry-go-contrib | >= 0.38.0, < 0.39.0 |
Weakness: CWE-400 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H