Skip to content

otelhttp and otelbeego have DoS vulnerability for high cardinality metrics

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Feb 8, 2023 in open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib • Updated Jun 13, 2023

Package

gomod go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/github.com/astaxie/beego/otelbeego (Go)

Affected versions

>= 0.38.0, < 0.39.0

Patched versions

0.39.0
gomod go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp (Go)
>= 0.38.0, < 0.39.0
0.39.0

Description

Impact

The v0.38.0 release of go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp uses the httpconv.ServerRequest function to annotate metric measurements for the http.server.request_content_length, http.server.response_content_length, and http.server.duration instruments.

The ServerRequest function sets the http.target attribute value to be the whole request URI (including the query string)1. The metric instruments do not "forget" previous measurement attributes when cumulative temporality is used, this means the cardinality of the measurements allocated is directly correlated with the unique URIs handled. If the query string is constantly random, this will result in a constant increase in memory allocation that can be used in a denial-of-service attack.

Pseudo-attack:

for infinite loop {
  r := generate_random_string()
  do_http_request("/some/path?random="+r)
}

Patches

  • go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp - v0.39.0
  • go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/github.com/astaxie/beego/otelbeego - v0.39.0

References

Footnotes

  1. https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/6cb5718eaaed5c408c3bf4ad1aecee5c20ccdaa9/semconv/internal/v2/http.go#L202-L208

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Feb 8, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Feb 8, 2023
Reviewed Feb 8, 2023
Last updated Jun 13, 2023

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

0.097%
(42nd percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-25151

GHSA ID

GHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh
Loading Checking history
See something to contribute? Suggest improvements for this vulnerability.