CVE-2026-128085
Description
A flaw was found in OpenTelemetry-Go. This vulnerability can lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) through excessive memory consumption. When processing telemetry data such as spans, logs, or traces, the attribute length truncation mechanism fails to account for valid Unicode replacement characters. A remote attacker can supply crafted attributes containing these characters to bypass configured size limits, causing the application to retain unbounded memory and experience resource exhaustion.
Statement
This vulnerability is rated as having Moderate impact because, while remote unauthenticated requests can cause bounded attribute limits to be exceeded, the flaw is restricted to resource exhaustion and cannot compromise system integrity or confidentiality. Applications instrumented with OpenTelemetry-Go are only exposed when they ingest untrusted user input directly into trace spans or log attributes without prior sanitization. Even when successfully exploited, the resulting impact is limited to higher memory consumption and increased processing overhead within the telemetry pipeline rather than arbitrary code execution or privilege escalation.
Mitigation
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 5.3 | N/A | 5.3 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | None | N/A | None |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | N/A | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | None | N/A | None |
| Integrity Impact | None | N/A | None |
| Availability Impact | Low | N/A | Low |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability
Technical Impact: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
This weakness may lead to a buffer overflow. Buffer overflows often can be used to execute arbitrary code, which is usually outside the scope of a program's implicit security policy. This can often be used to subvert any other security service.
Availability,Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Memory; DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)
Out of bounds memory access will very likely result in the corruption of relevant memory, and perhaps instructions, possibly leading to a crash. Other attacks leading to lack of availability are possible, including putting the program into an infinite loop.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Memory
In the case of an out-of-bounds read, the attacker may have access to sensitive information. If the sensitive information contains system details, such as the current buffer's position in memory, this knowledge can be used to craft further attacks, possibly with more severe consequences.
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