Headline
GHSA-rcjv-mgp8-qvmr: OpenTelemetry-Go Contrib vulnerable to denial of service in otelhttp due to unbound cardinality metrics
Summary
OpenTelemetry-Go Contrib has a handler wrapper otelhttp that adds the following labels by deafult that have unbound cardinality:
http.user_agenthttp.method
This leads to the server’s potential memory exhaustion when many malicious requests are sent to it.
Details
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.
This pull request released with version 0.44.0 dixes this vulnerability 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.
Impact
In order to be affected program has to use otelhttp.NewHandler wrapper and does not filter any unknown HTTP methods or User agents on the level of CDN, LB, previous middleware, etc.
Others
This vulnerability is similar but different from these known vulnerabilities:
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/security/advisories/GHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh (open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib)
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-cg3q-j54f-5p7p (prometheus/client_golang)
Workaround for affected versions
As a workaround, otelhttp.WithFilter() can be used instead, but it requires manual careful configuration to not log certain requests entirely.
Summary
OpenTelemetry-Go Contrib has a handler wrapper otelhttp that adds the following labels by deafult that have unbound cardinality:
- http.user_agent
- http.method
This leads to the server’s potential memory exhaustion when many malicious requests are sent to it.
Details
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.
This pull request released with version 0.44.0 dixes this vulnerability 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.
Impact
In order to be affected program has to use otelhttp.NewHandler wrapper and does not filter any unknown HTTP methods or User agents on the level of CDN, LB, previous middleware, etc.
Others
This vulnerability is similar but different from these known vulnerabilities:
- GHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh (open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib)
- GHSA-cg3q-j54f-5p7p (prometheus/client_golang)
Workaround for affected versions
As a workaround, otelhttp.WithFilter() can be used instead, but it requires manual careful configuration to not log certain requests entirely.
References
- GHSA-5r5m-65gx-7vrh
- GHSA-rcjv-mgp8-qvmr
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-45142
- open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib#4277
- GHSA-cg3q-j54f-5p7p
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/blob/5f7e6ad5a49b45df45f61a1deb29d7f1158032df/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp/handler.go#L63-L65
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/releases/tag/v1.19.0
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/38e1b499c3da3107694ad2660b3888eee9c8b896/semconv/internal/v2/http.go#L223
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/v1.12.0/semconv/internal/v2/http.go#L159
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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 requir...