GHSA-w8rr-5gcm-pp58

    Dashboard / Vulnerabilities / GHSA-w8rr-5gcm-pp58

    GHSA-w8rr-5gcm-pp58

    Published: 8 Apr 2026Last Modified: 10 Sept 2026

    Summary: opentelemetry-go: OTLP HTTP exporters read unbounded HTTP response bodies

    Details: overview: this report shows that the otlp HTTP exporters (traces/metrics/logs) read the full HTTP response body into an in-memory `bytes.Buffer` without a size cap. this is exploitable for memory exhaustion when the configured collector endpoint is attacker-controlled (or a network attacker can mitm the exporter connection). severity HIGH not claiming: this is a remote dos against every default deployment. claiming: if the exporter sends traces to an untrusted collector endpoint (or over a network segment where mitm is realistic), that endpoint can crash the process via a large response body. callsite (pinned): - exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp/client.go:199 - exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp/client.go:230 - exporters/otlp/otlpmetric/otlpmetrichttp/client.go:170 - exporters/otlp/otlpmetric/otlpmetrichttp/client.go:201 - exporters/otlp/otlplog/otlploghttp/client.go:190 - exporters/otlp/otlplog/otlploghttp/client.go:221 permalinks (pinned): - https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/248da958375e4dfb4a1105645107be3ef04b1c59/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp/client.go#L199 - https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/248da958375e4dfb4a1105645107be3ef04b1c59/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp/client.go#L230 - https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/248da958375e4dfb4a1105645107be3ef04b1c59/exporters/otlp/otlpmetric/otlpmetrichttp/client.go#L170 - https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/248da958375e4dfb4a1105645107be3ef04b1c59/exporters/otlp/otlpmetric/otlpmetrichttp/client.go#L201 - https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/248da958375e4dfb4a1105645107be3ef04b1c59/exporters/otlp/otlplog/otlploghttp/client.go#L190 - https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/248da958375e4dfb4a1105645107be3ef04b1c59/exporters/otlp/otlplog/otlploghttp/client.go#L221 root cause: each exporter client reads `resp.Body` using `io.Copy(&respData, resp.Body)` into a `bytes.Buffer` on both success and error paths, with no upper bound. impact: a malicious collector can force large transient heap allocations during export (peak memory scales with attacker-chosen response size) and can potentially crash the instrumented process (oom). affected component: - go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp - go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlpmetric/otlpmetrichttp - go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlplog/otlploghttp repro (local-only): ```bash unzip poc.zip -d poc cd poc make canonical resp_bytes=33554432 chunk_delay_ms=0 ``` expected output contains: ``` [CALLSITE_HIT]: otlptracehttp.UploadTraces::io.Copy(resp.Body) [PROOF_MARKER]: resp_bytes=33554432 peak_alloc_bytes=118050512 ``` control (same env, patched target): ```bash unzip poc.zip -d poc cd poc make control resp_bytes=33554432 chunk_delay_ms=0 ``` expected control output contains: ``` [CALLSITE_HIT]: otlptracehttp.UploadTraces::io.Copy(resp.Body) [NC_MARKER]: resp_bytes=33554432 peak_alloc_bytes=512232 ``` attachments: poc.zip (attached) [PR_DESCRIPTION.md](https://github.com/user-attachments/files/25564272/PR_DESCRIPTION.md) [attack_scenario.md](https://github.com/user-attachments/files/25564273/attack_scenario.md) [poc.zip](https://github.com/user-attachments/files/25564271/poc.zip) Fixed in: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/pull/8108

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp

    Purl: pkg:golang/go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp

    Affected ranges

    Type: SEMVER

    Events:

    Introduced- 0
    Fixed -1.43.0

    Affected versions

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High