CVE-2026-29049 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.3) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in chainguard.dev/melange. A fix is available for chainguard.dev/melange — see the affected versions and patch details below.
melange: unbounded HTTP download in `melange update-cache` can exhaust disk in CI
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-2026-29049.
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-2026-29049 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 377,166 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
chainguard.dev/melangeReal-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
melange allows users to build apk packages using declarative pipelines. In version 0.40.5 and prior, melange update-cache downloads URIs from build configs via io.Copy without any size limit or HTTP client timeout (pkg/renovate/cache/cache.go). An attacker-controlled URI in a melange config can cause unbounded disk writes, exhausting disk on the build runne. Version 0.43.4 contains a patch.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | chainguard.dev/melange | all versions | 0.43.4go get chainguard.dev/melange@v0.43.4 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for chainguard.dev/melange, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update chainguard.dev/melange to 0.43.4 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-29049 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2026-29049 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-29049. 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-2026-29049 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-29049 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.