Process crash via unbounded exporter response buffering
Published Apr 8, 2026 · Updated Apr 8, 2026
Resource exhaustion in OpenTelemetry-Go before 1.43.0 allows attackers to crash instrumented processes via malicious collector responses. OTLP HTTP trace, metric, and log exporter clients pass the entire resp.Body to io.Copy into an in-memory bytes.Buffer without a size limit on success and error paths. Exploitation requires an attacker-controlled collector endpoint or a man-in-the-middle position on the exporter connection; attacker-chosen response size drives heap growth and an out-of-memory process crash.
Summary
What happened
Resource exhaustion in OpenTelemetry-Go before 1.43.0 allows attackers to crash instrumented processes via malicious collector responses. OTLP HTTP trace, metric, and log exporter clients pass the entire resp.Body to io.Copy into an in-memory bytes.Buffer without a size limit on success and error paths. Exploitation requires an attacker-controlled collector endpoint or a man-in-the-middle position on the exporter connection; attacker-chosen response size drives heap growth and an out-of-memory process crash.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-39882
- Published
- Apr 8, 2026
- Updated
- Apr 8, 2026
- Vendor
- OpenTelemetry
- Product
- OpenTelemetry-Go
- Classifications
- CWE-789, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- adjacent
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Apr 8, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Apr 8, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=< 1.43.0
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- GHSA local reproduction proof of conceptproof of concept · demonstrated
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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