CVE-2022-36055 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in helm.sh/helm/v3. A fix is available for helm.sh/helm/v3 — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Denial of service in Helm
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-36055.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
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
Fuzz testing, by Ada Logics and sponsored by the CNCF, identified input to functions in the _strvals_ package that can cause an out of memory panic. Out of memory panics cannot be recovered from. Applications that use functions from the _strvals_ package in the Helm SDK can have a Denial of Service attack when they use this package and it panics.
Impact
The _strvals_ package contains a parser that turns strings into Go structures. For example, the Helm client has command line flags like --set, --set-string, and others that enable the user to pass in strings that are merged into the values. 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.
Patches
This issue has been resolved in 3.9.4.
Workarounds
SDK users can validate strings supplied by users won't create large arrays causing significant memory usage before passing them to the _strvals_ functions.
For more information
Helm's security policy is spelled out in detail in our SECURITY document.
Credits
Disclosed by Ada Logics in a fuzzing audit sponsored by CNCF.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | helm.sh/helm/v3 | all versions | 3.9.4go get helm.sh/helm/v3@v3.9.4 |
Affected Products
helmhelmDetection & 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, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
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
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-36055 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.