Opentelemetry
CVE-2023-45142
HIGH
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A06:2025 - Insecure Design
ASVS 5.0
V2 - Validation and Business Logic Resource allocation limits
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Impact The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Impact | CVSS score of 7.5 (HIGH). Attack characteristics: network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction not required. Public proof-of-concept exploit code is available. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | A remote attacker could exhaust system resources through uncontrolled allocation by sending crafted requests to the affected application. No authentication is required to exploit this vulnerability. |
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Alert meAnalysisAI
OpenTelemetry-Go Contrib is a collection of third-party packages for OpenTelemetry-Go. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. Public exploit code available and no vendor patch available.
RemediationAI
No vendor patch is available at time of analysis. Monitor vendor advisories for updates. Set resource limits, implement rate limiting, validate input sizes.
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 7 packages in go
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified as Allocation of Resources Without Limits (CWE-770), which allows attackers to exhaust system resources through uncontrolled allocation. 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. Affected products include: Opentelemetry. Version information: Version 0.44.0.
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionNVD
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.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
GitHub
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Denial of Service attacks render applications or systems unavailable by overwhelming resources or triggering failure conditions.
Affected Products (CPE)NVD
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