GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Go

GHSA-whmm-qj9r-wvr2 td has pre-auth denial of service via unbounded memory allocation in proto.UnencryptedMessage.Decode

HIGH Published 2026-07-28 Modified 2026-07-28 Official page ↗
Aliases
CVE-2026-54638
Ecosystem
Go
Packages
github.com/gotd/td
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-770, CWE-789
Reviewed
2026-07-28

Affected packages

• Go github.com/gotd/td: < 0.145.1 → fixed in 0.145.1

Description

Impact A remote, unauthenticated attacker can cause excessive memory allocation (and resulting CPU / GC pressure, potentially OOM termination) by sending a crafted unencrypted MTProto packet. `(*proto.UnencryptedMessage).Decode` read an attacker-controlled 32-bit `dataLen` field and immediately allocated a buffer of that size via `make([]byte, dataLen)` before validating that the underlying buffer actually contained that many bytes. A 20-byte packet declaring a ~1.75 GB payload (e.g. `dataLen = 0x70000000`) forces the runtime to provision and zero-initialize a multi-gigabyte heap allocation before the length is rejected. Unencrypted messages are part of the unauthenticated MTProto handshake path, so no credentials or established session are required to reach the vulnerable code. Impact is limited to availability; there is no evidence of memory corruption, out-of-bounds access, or code execution. Patches Fixed in v0.145.1 by validating `dataLen` against the remaining buffer length before allocation (commit `9d5d1f31e`). Workarounds Upgrade to v0.145.1 or later. There is no in-process workaround for affected versions short of avoiding exposure of the unauthenticated MTProto parsing path to untrusted peers.

Related

Alias · CVE (1)

  • CVE-2026-54638 gotd/td is a T Telegram MTProto API client in Go. vulnerability

Weakness · CWE (2)

  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling weakness
  • CWE-789 Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value weakness

References