CVE-2024-29902 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.2) CWE-770 vulnerability in github.com/sigstore/cosign. A fix is available for github.com/sigstore/cosign — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Cosign vulnerable to system-wide denial of service via malicious attachments
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2024-29902.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-29902 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,333 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/sigstore/cosign🐹github.com/sigstore/cosign/v2Real-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
Cosign provides code signing and transparency for containers and binaries. Prior to version 2.2.4, a remote image with a malicious attachment can cause denial of service of the host machine running Cosign. This can impact other services on the machine that rely on having memory available such as a Redis database which can result in data loss. It can also impact the availability of other services on the machine that will not be available for the duration of the machine denial. The root cause of this issue is that Cosign reads the attachment from a remote image entirely into memory without checking the size of the attachment first. As such, a large attachment can make Cosign read a large attachment into memory; If the attachments size is larger than the machine has memory available, the machine will be denied of service. The Go runtime will make a SigKill after a few seconds of system-wide denial. This issue can allow a supply-chain escalation from a compromised registry to the Cosign user: If an attacher has compromised a registry or the account of an image vendor, they can include a malicious attachment and hurt the image consumer. Version 2.2.4 contains a patch for the vulnerability.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/sigstore/cosign | all versions | No fix |
| 🐹Go | github.com/sigstore/cosign/v2 | all versions | 2.2.4go get github.com/sigstore/cosign/v2@v2.2.4 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/sigstore/cosign, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
No patched version of github.com/sigstore/cosign has shipped for CVE-2024-29902 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2024-29902 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-29902. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| OpenShift-Pipelines-1.15-RHEL-8 | openshift-pipelines-client-0:1.15.0-11496.el8 | RHEA-2024:4022 |
| Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security 4.5 | advanced-cluster-security/rhacs-central-db-rhel8:4.5.0-2 | RHSA-2024:4836 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-29902 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-29902 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.