What is CVE-2023-25151?

CVE-2023-25151 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linuxfoundation Opentelemetry-Go Contrib, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2023-02-08.

How severe is CVE-2023-25151?

High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.

Resource exhaustion in Linuxfoundation Opentelemetry-Go Contrib

CVE-2023-25151

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.

Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)

Published 2023-02-08 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.010 (60.6th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 61st percentile — 60.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.010 · newest: 0.010 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Linuxfoundation Opentelemetry-Go Contrib — versions 0.38.0
Open-Telemetry Opentelemetry-Go-Contrib — versions >= 0.38.0, < 0.39.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-400 — Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

References

github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-contrib/security/advisories/GHSA-5r5… (Exploit, Vendor Advisory)
github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go/blob/v1.12.0/semconv/internal/v2/htt… (Vendor Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-25151?: CVE-2023-25151 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linuxfoundation Opentelemetry-Go Contrib, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2023-02-08.
How severe is CVE-2023-25151?: High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.