GitHub Advisoryadvisory · NuGet
GHSA-g94r-2vxg-569j OpenTelemetry dotnet: Excessive memory allocation when parsing OpenTelemetry propagation headers
MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-40894
- Ecosystem
- NuGet
- Packages
- OpenTelemetry.Api, OpenTelemetry.Extensions.Propagators
- Severity
- Moderate
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- Weaknesses
- CWE-789
- Reviewed
- 2026-04-23
Affected packages
• NuGet OpenTelemetry.Api: >= 0.5.0-beta.2, < 1.15.3 → fixed in 1.15.3
• NuGet OpenTelemetry.Extensions.Propagators: >= 1.3.1, < 1.15.3 → fixed in 1.15.3
Description
Summary
The implementation details of the baggage, B3 and Jaeger processing code in the `OpenTelemetry.Api` and `OpenTelemetry.Extensions.Propagators` NuGet packages can allocate excessive memory when parsing which could create a potential denial of service (DoS) in the consuming application.
Details
Exceeding Limits
`BaggagePropagator.Inject()` does not enforce the length limit of `8192` characters if the injected baggage contains only one item.
This change was introduced by #1048.
Excessive allocation
The following methods eagerly allocate intermediate arrays before applying size limits.
• `BaggagePropagator.Extract()` - this change was introduced by #1048.
• `BaggagePropagator.Inject()` - this change was introduced by #1048.
• `B3Propagator.Extract()` - this change was introduced by #533.
• `B3Propagator.Extract()` - this change was introduced by #3244.
• `JaegerPropagator.Extract()` - this change was introduced by #3309.
Impact
Excessively large propagation headers, particularly in degenerate/malformed cases that consist or large numbers of delimiter characters, can allocate excessive amounts of memory for intermediate storage of parsed content relative to the size of the original input.
Mitigation
HTTP servers often set maximum limits on the length of HTTP request headers, such as Internet Information Services (IIS) which sets a default limit of 16KB and nginx which sets a default limit of 8KB.
Workarounds
Possible workarounds include:
• Configuring appropriate HTTP request header limits.
• Disabling baggage and/or trace propagation.
Remediation
#7061 refactors the handling of baggage, B3 and Jaeger propagation headers to stop parsing eagerly when limits are exceeded and avoid allocating intermediate arrays.
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-40894 OpenTelemetry dotnet is a dotnet telemetry framework. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-789 Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value weakness
References
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/security/advisories/GHSA-g94r-2vxg-569j web
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-40894 advisory
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/pull/1048 web
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/pull/3244 web
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/pull/3309 web
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/pull/3533 web
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/pull/533 web
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/pull/7061 web
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet package
- https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/releases/tag/core-1.15.3 web