CVE-2023-25151DoS vulnerability for high cardinality metrics in opentelemetry-go-contrib
- 7.5HighCVSS base score
- 0.97%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 37% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- YesPublic exploitsa reference or SSVC says so
Description
opentelemetry-go-contrib is a collection of extensions for OpenTelemetry-Go. 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. This issue has been addressed in version 0.39.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.
Public exploit
An exploit or proof of concept is public: anyone can try it against an unpatched system. CISA's SSVC rates its exploitation: a proof of concept is public.
Timeline
ID reserved
By GitHub_M
- 5 days later
· 5 days later
Published
- 2 years later
· 2 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub_MCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | High7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.97% · top 37% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.5.
Affected products
open-telemetry · opentelemetry-go-contrib
- affected >= 0.38.0, < 0.39.0
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- Gogo.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/github.com/astaxie/beego/otelbeegoGHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh (opens in a new tab)
- Gogo.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttpGHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh (opens in a new tab)
References
References2
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/security/advisories/GHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_CONFIRMx_transferred
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/v1.12.0/semconv/internal/v2/http.go#L159 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2023-0632 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2023-25151)Record last updated .