CVE-2026-24051 is a high-severity (CVSS 7) CWE-426 vulnerability in go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk. A fix is available for go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk — see the affected versions and patch details below.
OpenTelemetry-Go Affected by Arbitrary Code Execution via PATH Hijacking
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- 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-2026-24051.
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
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdkReal-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
Impact
The OpenTelemetry Go SDK in version v1.20.0-1.39.0 is vulnerable to Path Hijacking (Untrusted Search Paths) on macOS/Darwin systems. The resource detection code in sdk/resource/host_id.go executes the ioreg system command using a search path. An attacker with the ability to locally modify the PATH environment variable can achieve Arbitrary Code Execution (ACE) within the context of the application.
Patches
This has been patched in d45961b, which was released with v1.40.0.
References
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk | ≥ 1.21.0&&< 1.40.0 | 1.40.0go get go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk@v1.40.0 |
Affected Products
opentelemetryopentelemetryDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk to 1.40.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-24051 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.
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.
Red Hat Workload Availability Operators FAR (fence-agents-remediation) and SBR (storage-based-remediation) bundle go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk in the vulnerable range (>=1.21.0, <1.40.0) prior to the rhwa-4.22-1 patch release. Fixed by bumping to v1.44.0 in the far-0.8.1 and sbr-0.3.1 streams. This flaw was previously…
No customer action required for FAR/SBR as deployed on OpenShift: the vulnerable resource-detection code path only executes on macOS/Darwin hosts via the 'ioreg' command, which is never invoked on Red Hat's Linux container images. Fixed proactively via dependency bump to go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk v1.44.0 in far-0.8.1 and sbr-0.3.1.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-24051 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-24051 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.