medium

CVE-2026-48504

crates.io · opentelemetry_sdk

Summary

opentelemetry_sdk has unbounded memory allocation in W3C Baggage propagation

Severity
medium
CVSS
5.3
EPSS
0.4% (p35)
CWE
CWE-770
Also known as
GHSA-w9wp-h8wv-79jx
Published
2026-06-25
Updated
2026-06-25

Advisory details

Summary

BaggagePropagator::extract_with_context in opentelemetry_sdk did not enforce the W3C Baggage size limits before parsing an inbound baggage header. A large attacker-controlled header could cause unnecessary CPU work and short-lived heap allocations while parsing entries that would later be discarded by the SDK's baggage storage limits.

The SDK now applies limits aligned with the W3C Baggage limits:

Impact

Services that accept untrusted inbound propagation headers may experience increased per-request resource usage when processing oversized baggage headers. This can contribute to denial-of-service risk, especially when application or transport-level header limits are absent or configured above the W3C Baggage limits.

The impact is limited to availability. This issue does not expose telemetry data, modify telemetry data, or allow code execution.

Patches

Upgrade opentelemetry_sdk to version 0.32.1 or later.

Version 0.32.1 rejects baggage header values larger than 8192 bytes and limits extraction to the first 64 list-members.

Workarounds

If upgrading immediately is not possible, reject or limit inbound baggage headers larger than 8192 bytes before invoking OpenTelemetry propagation extraction. This can be enforced at a proxy, gateway, middleware layer, or custom carrier boundary.

Resources

Credit

tonghuaroot

References

Related advisories

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Sources: CISA KEV (public domain), OSV.dev & GitHub Advisory Database (CC-BY-4.0), FIRST EPSS, NVD/CWE (public domain). Served live from the Stateward advisory database.