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CVE-2023-45142

HighCVSS 7.5 / 10
Published Oct 12, 2023·Last modified Apr 10, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

OpenTelemetry-Go Contrib is a collection of third-party packages for OpenTelemetry-Go. A handler wrapper out of the box adds labels http.user_agent and http.method that have unbound cardinality. It leads to the server's potential memory exhaustion when many malicious requests are sent to it. HTTP header User-Agent or HTTP method for requests can be easily set by an attacker to be random and long. The library internally uses httpconv.ServerRequest that records every value for HTTP method and User-Agent. In order to be affected, a program has to use the otelhttp.NewHandler wrapper and not filter any unknown HTTP methods or User agents on the level of CDN, LB, previous middleware, etc. Version 0.44.0 fixed this issue when the values collected for attribute http.request.method were changed to be restricted to a set of well-known values and other high cardinality attributes were removed. As a workaround to stop being affected, otelhttp.WithFilter() can be used, but it requires manual careful configuration to not log certain requests entirely. For convenience and safe usage of this library, it should by default mark with the label unknown non-standard HTTP methods and User agents to show that such requests were made but do not increase cardinality. In case someone wants to stay with the current behavior, library API should allow to enable it.

Risk Scores
Base Score
7.5

The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
6.9

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
1.36%

The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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