GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734 — skipper
HIGHGHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.2) CWE-754 vulnerability in github.com/zalando/skipper. A fix is available for github.com/zalando/skipper — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Skipper: Incomplete fix for CVE-2026-50197: an oversized body can bypass OPA deny-on-presence Rego policies
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 GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734.
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
GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734 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
github.com/zalando/skipperReal-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
A wrong policy can be an open door.
You have to check input.attributes.request.http.truncated_body in your policy.
Description
Incomplete fix for CVE-2026-50197: an oversized declared-Content-Length body still hands OPA an empty parsed_body, so deny-on-presence Rego policies fail OPEN while the full payload reaches upstream.
The CVE-2026-50197 fix (commit 3152f3b0, PR #4041, v0.26.10) substituted expectedSize = maxBodyBytes
only when req.ContentLength < 0 (chunked / HTTP/2 without content-length). But when a request declares a
Content-Length larger than maxBodyBytes, expectedSize > maxBodyBytes, the body-extraction if is
skipped entirely, and ExtractHttpBodyOptionally returns rawBodyBytes = nil — so OPA evaluates an empty
parsed_body, while the full forbidden payload still flows to the upstream. A deny-on-presence policy
(default allow = true; allow = false if input.parsed_body.<forbidden>) — the exact Rego shape the
advisory describes — fails OPEN. The fix's own comment reasons only about ContentLength == -1; the
oversized branch was never considered, and the added PoC test only covers small bodies.
Affected code
filters/openpolicyagent/openpolicyagent.goExtractHttpBodyOptionally: theexpectedSize <= maxBodyBytesgate lets an oversized declared body fall through toreturn req.Body, nil, func() {}, nil(OPA sees an empty document).- Corroborated by Skipper's own unit test "Read body exhausting max bytes" (
{ "welcome": "world" },maxBodySize: 5→bodyInPolicy: "").
Steps to reproduce
See attached docker-compose.yml (official golang image) + setup.sh + exploit.sh, which run a real
Skipper proxy (proxytest) with a real OPA control plane (opasdktest),
WithMaxRequestBodyBytes(32), policy allow = false if input.parsed_body.action == "delete", route
* -> opaAuthorizeRequestWithBody("test") -> upstream:
{"action":"delete"}(19B ≤ 32) → 403 (denied).{"action":"delete","pad":"X..64"}(> 32) → 200, upstream received the full body (BYPASS).- small chunked
{"action":"delete"}→ 403 (positive control: the original CVE is fixed).
(Library-tier: validated via Skipper's real proxy test harness, not a deploy of the official image; benign oracle = status diff + upstream-received body; no RCE.)
Impact
Deployments authorizing on request-body content via opaAuthorizeRequestWithBody + deny-on-presence Rego
can be bypassed by inflating the request body past -open-policy-agent-max-request-body-size (default
1 MB); the full payload still reaches the upstream.
Mitigation
Document how policy owners should block requests with oversized body.
Example deny by default and use "allow if" no oversized body:
default allow := false
allow if {
input.attributes.request.http.truncated_body == false
# ... body-based conditions
}
Example allow by default and use "deny if" an oversized body:
default deny := false
deny if {
input.attributes.request.http.truncated_body == true
# ... body-based conditions
}
Documentation is published by https://github.com/zalando/skipper/releases/tag/v0.27.26
Credit
Reported as part of an incomplete-patch measurement study (responsible disclosure).
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/zalando/skipper | all versions | 0.27.26go get github.com/zalando/skipper@v0.27.26 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/zalando/skipper, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/zalando/skipper to 0.27.26 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734 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 GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-8qqm-fp2q-v734 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.