CVE-2022-36055
MEDIUMCVE-2022-36055 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in helm.sh/helm/v3. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2022-36055 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
Denial of service in Helm
Real-World Exposure
helm.sh/helm/v3Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Helm is a tool for managing Charts. Charts are packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources. Fuzz testing, provided by the CNCF, identified input to functions in the strvals package that can cause an out of memory panic. The strvals package contains a parser that turns strings in to Go structures. The strvals package converts these strings into structures Go can work with. Some string inputs can cause array data structures to be created causing an out of memory panic. Applications that use the strvals package in the Helm SDK to parse user supplied input can suffer a Denial of Service when that input causes a panic that cannot be recovered from. The Helm Client will panic with input to --set, --set-string, and other value setting flags that causes an out of memory panic. Helm is not a long running service so the panic will not affect future uses of the Helm client. This issue has been resolved in 3.9.4. SDK users can validate strings supplied by users won't create large arrays causing significant memory usage before passing them to the strvals functions.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | helm.sh/helm/v3 | all versions | 3.9.4 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for helm.sh/helm/v3. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update helm.sh/helm/v3 to 3.9.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-36055 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2022-36055 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2022-36055. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-36055 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2022-36055 across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.