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GHSA-mh2q-q3fh-2475
No affected components available
multi-value baggage: header extraction parses each header field-value independently and aggregates members across values. this allows an attacker to amplify cpu and allocations by sending many baggage: header lines, even when each individual value is within the 8192-byte per-value parse limit.
severity
HIGH (availability / remote request amplification)
relevant links
- repository: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go
- pinned callsite: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/1ee4a4126dbdd1bc79e9fae072fa488beffac52a/propagation/baggage.go#L58
vulnerability details
pins: open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go@1ee4a4126dbdd1bc79e9fae072fa488beffac52a as-of: 2026-02-04 policy: direct (no program scope provided)
callsite: propagation/baggage.go:58 (extractMultiBaggage)
attacker control: inbound HTTP request headers (many baggage field-values) → propagation.HeaderCarrier.Values("baggage") → repeated baggage.Parse + member aggregation
root cause
extractMultiBaggage iterates over all baggage header field-values and parses each one independently, then appends members into a shared slice. the 8192-byte parsing cap applies per header value, but the multi-value path repeats that work once per header line (bounded only by the server/proxy header byte limit).
impact
in a default net/http configuration (max header bytes 1mb), a single request with many baggage: header field-values can cause large per-request allocations and increased latency.
example from the attached PoC harness (darwin/arm64; 80 values; 40 requests):
- canonical:
per_req_alloc_bytes=10315458andp95_ms=7 - control:
per_req_alloc_bytes=133429andp95_ms=0
proof of concept
canonical:
mkdir -p poc
unzip poc.zip -d poc
cd poc
make test
output (excerpt):
[CALLSITE_HIT]: propagation/baggage.go:58 extractMultiBaggage
[PROOF_MARKER]: baggage_multi_value_amplification p95_ms=7 per_req_alloc_bytes=10315458 per_req_allocs=16165
control:
cd poc
make control
control output (excerpt):
[NC_MARKER]: baggage_single_value_baseline p95_ms=0 per_req_alloc_bytes=133429 per_req_allocs=480
expected: multiple baggage header field-values should be semantically equivalent to a single comma-joined baggage value and should not multiply parsing/alloc work within the effective header byte budget.
actual: multiple baggage header field-values trigger repeated parsing and member aggregation, causing high per-request allocations and increased latency even when each individual value is within 8192 bytes.
fix recommendation
avoid repeated parsing across multi-values by enforcing a global budget and/or normalizing multi-values into a single value before parsing. one mitigation approach is to treat multi-values as a single comma-joined string and cap total parsed bytes (for example 8192 bytes total).
fix accepted when: under the default PoC harness settings, canonical stays within 2x of control for per_req_alloc_bytes and per_req_allocs, and p95_ms stays below 2ms.
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.
Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
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