CVE-2026-81869

Description

A flaw was found in OpenTelemetry-Go. An attacker who can control span attribute content can bypass the attribute length truncation mechanism. This occurs when string attributes contain the Unicode replacement character U+FFFD, preventing the enforcement of configured memory limits. This vulnerability allows for increased memory usage per span, which can weaken denial-of-service protection in the instrumented process.

Statement

Red Hat Product Security has determined that this vulnerability does not affect any currently supported Red Hat product. This assessment may evolve based on further analysis and discovery. For more information about this vulnerability and the products it affects, please see the linked references.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

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