GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Go
GHSA-5588-rp99-5fjh Moov signedxml: Unauthenticated denial of service in exclusive XML canonicalization
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-113729
- Ecosystem
- Go
- Packages
- github.com/moov-io/signedxml
- Severity
- High
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-400, CWE-407, CWE-770
- Reviewed
- 2026-10-21
Affected packages
• Go github.com/moov-io/signedxml: < 1.4.1 → fixed in 1.4.1
Description
Exclusive XML canonicalization (`http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#`) in `github.com/moov-io/signedxml` copied the entire accumulated namespace map at every node during `ValidateReferences()`, before any reference digest or signature check.
For a chain of nested elements that each declare many unused namespace prefixes, that produced O(m × depth²) time and peak memory (`m` = prefixes per level). `beevik/etree` caps tree depth (~1024), but `m` is unbounded, so a small attacker-controlled document (on the order of 1 MB) could drive multi-gigabyte allocations and OOM the process. No valid signature, matching certificate, or authentication is required.
This is the library’s core path for SAML / WS-Federation service providers, which canonicalize attacker-supplied XML prior to authentication.
Affected
• Package: `github.com/moov-io/signedxml`
• Function: `ExclusiveCanonicalization` (`exclusivecanonicalization.go`)
• Verified: v1.4.0 and current default branch (commit `d79064a`). Earlier v1.2.x–v1.3.x releases are likely affected.
Remediation
Do not copy the whole namespace map per node. Maintain a single scope and push/pop only the prefixes introduced at each element. Replace linear prefix-in-scope scans with set lookups. Impose a defensive cap on in-scope namespace declarations and return an error rather than allocating unbounded memory.
From @shuji-oh
```
Thanks for the fix — I re-ran my PoC against this branch and confirmed the memory blowup is gone.
Before (main)
-- Doubling depth each time (m=10 fixed): allocated grows ~4x each time ≈ O(depth^2) --
depth=250 m=10 payload= 0.07MB allocated= 45MB
depth=500 m=10 payload= 0.14MB allocated= 179MB
depth=1000 m=10 payload= 0.27MB allocated= 711MB
-- Increasing m (depth=1000 fixed): allocated scales roughly linearly with m --
depth=1000 m=5 payload= 0.16MB allocated= 377MB
depth=1000 m=100 payload= 2.57MB allocated= 6278MB
After (fix/exc-c14n-namespace-dos)
-- Doubling depth each time (m=10 fixed): allocated grows ~4x each time ≈ O(depth^2) --
depth=250 m=10 payload= 0.07MB allocated= 2MB
depth=500 m=10 payload= 0.14MB allocated= 4MB
depth=1000 m=10 payload= 0.27MB allocated= 7MB
-- Increasing m (depth=1000 fixed): allocated scales roughly linearly with m --
depth=1000 m=5 payload= 0.16MB allocated= 4MB
depth=1000 m=100 payload= 2.57MB allocated= 47MB
That's roughly a 100–130x reduction in peak allocation for the same payload sizes, and no OOM in any of my runs. This looks like it resolves the issue — thanks for the quick fix!
```
Credit
Reported by Shuji Ohira (@shuji-oh).
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-113729 Moov signedxml is a pure Go library for processing signed XML documents. vulnerability
References
- https://github.com/moov-io/signedxml/security/advisories/GHSA-5588-rp99-5fjh web
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-113729 advisory
- https://github.com/moov-io/signedxml/commit/da2cd6126c4c53b7e59a367d287786e6f6a2d0d3 web
- https://github.com/moov-io/signedxml package
- https://github.com/moov-io/signedxml/releases/tag/v1.4.1 web