CVE-2023-30551 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in github.com/sigstore/rekor. A fix is available for github.com/sigstore/rekor — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Rekor's compressed archives can result in OOM conditions
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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-2023-30551.
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
github.com/sigstore/rekorReal-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
Summary
Two vulnerabilities have been found in Rekor types for archive files JARs and APKs, where Rekor would crash due to out of memory conditions caused by reading archive metadata files into memory without checking their sizes first causing a Denial of Service of Rekor.
These vulnerabilities were found through fuzzing with OSS-Fuzz.
Vulnerability 1: OOM due to large files in META-INF directory of JAR files.
Summary
Verification of a JAR file submitted to Rekor can cause an out of memory crash if files within the META-INF directory of the JAR are sufficiently large.
Details
As part of verifying a JAR file, Rekor uses the relic library to check that the JAR is signed, the signature verifies, and that the hashes in the signed manifest are all valid. This library function reads files within META-INF/ into memory without checking their sizes, resulting in an OOM if the uncompressed file is sufficiently large. Rekor is also not performing any such checks prior to passing the JAR to this library function.
Patches
Users should update to the latest version of Rekor, 1.1.1.
Workaround
There are no workarounds, users should update.
Vulnerability 2: OOM due to large .SIGN and .PKGINFO files in APK files.
Summary
Parsing of an APK file submitted to Rekor can cause an out of memory crash if the .SIGN or .PKGINFO files within the APK are sufficiently large.
Details
When parsing an APK file, Rekor allocates byte slices to read both the .SIGN and .PKGINFO files into memory in order to verify the signature and hashes in the APK. These byte slices are allocated based on the size included in the tar header for each file, with no checks performed on that size. If the size in the header is sufficiently large, either because the uncompressed file is large or the size in the header has been artificially set to a large value, Rekor will crash due to an out of memory panic.
Patches
Users should update to the latest version of Rekor, 1.1.1.
Workaround
There are no workarounds, users should update.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/sigstore/rekor | all versions | 1.1.1go get github.com/sigstore/rekor@v1.1.1 |
Affected Products
rekorlinuxfoundationDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/sigstore/rekor, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/sigstore/rekor to 1.1.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-30551 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.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.13 | openshift4/ose-docker-builder:v4.13.0-202311091630.p0.g0155fb1.assembly.stream | RHSA-2023:7323 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.15 | openshift4/ose-openshift-controller-manager-rhel9:v4.15.0-202402040308.p0.g87d2511.assembly.stream | RHSA-2023:7198 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-30551 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.