GHSA-962q-hwm5-52x5
MEDIUMGHSA-962q-hwm5-52x5 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.1) CWE-401 vulnerability in go.opentelemetry.io/obi. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-962q-hwm5-52x5 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation: CappedConcurrentHashMap leaks keys after removals
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 GHSA-962q-hwm5-52x5.
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-962q-hwm5-52x5 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 0 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
go.opentelemetry.io/obiReal-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
The custom CappedConcurrentHashMap introduced for Java TLS state tracking never removes keys from its insertion-order queue when entries are deleted. In long-running instrumented JVMs, repeated connection churn can therefore grow the queue without bound and exhaust heap memory.
Details
The vulnerable implementation is in pkg/internal/java/agent/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/obi/java/instrumentations/util/CappedConcurrentHashMap.java#L11. New keys are appended to a ConcurrentLinkedQueue, and eviction only runs inside put() when map.size() > capacity.
The remove() method removes the key from the ConcurrentHashMap but leaves the key in the queue. Because evictIfNeeded() only checks map.size() > capacity, the queue can grow forever in workloads that insert and remove keys while keeping the live map below the cap.
This pattern is reachable from pkg/internal/java/agent/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/obi/java/instrumentations/data/SSLStorage.java#L66, where cleanupConnectionBufMapping removes entries from bufConn and activeConnections, and removeBufferMapping removes entries from bufToBuf. In normal TLS connection lifecycles, those removals happen frequently.
PoC
Local testing with a small Java reproducer showed queue growth continuing after removals and eventually reached OutOfMemoryError, which matches the code-level leak mechanism described above.
Use a vulnerable Java agent build from v0.0.0-rc.2+build.2 or any later release that still contains the change. Start any JVM process instrumented with OBI's Java TLS support, then generate a large number of short-lived TLS handshakes.
One local reproducer is:
git checkout v0.0.0-rc.2+build.2
make build
Start a simple TLS server:
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout /tmp/key.pem -out /tmp/cert.pem -subj '/CN=localhost' -days 1
openssl s_server -accept 9443 -key /tmp/key.pem -cert /tmp/cert.pem -quiet
Run an instrumented JVM client that repeatedly opens and closes TLS connections:
// save as /tmp/TLSChurn.java
import javax.net.ssl.*;
import java.net.Socket;
public class TLSChurn {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
SSLContext ctx = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
ctx.init(null, new TrustManager[]{new X509TrustManager() {
public java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() { return null; }
public void checkClientTrusted(java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] c, String a) {}
public void checkServerTrusted(java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] c, String a) {}
}}, new java.security.SecureRandom());
SSLSocketFactory f = ctx.getSocketFactory();
for (;;) {
try (Socket s = f.createSocket("127.0.0.1", 9443)) {
s.getOutputStream().write("x".getBytes());
} catch (Exception ignored) {}
}
}
}
Compile and run:
javac /tmp/TLSChurn.java
java TLSChurn
Attach the vulnerable OBI Java instrumentation to the JVM. Over time, heap usage in the OBI Java agent process grows even though live connection counts remain bounded. A heap dump will show large retention from ConcurrentLinkedQueue nodes owned by CappedConcurrentHashMap.
Impact
This issue causes an availability loss in instrumented Java workloads that use OBI's TLS instrumentation. Repeated connection setup and teardown can grow the retained queue until the Java helper experiences long GC pauses or exhausts heap memory with OutOfMemoryError.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | go.opentelemetry.io/obi | all versions | 0.9.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for go.opentelemetry.io/obi. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update go.opentelemetry.io/obi to 0.9.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-962q-hwm5-52x5 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 pinpoints whether GHSA-962q-hwm5-52x5 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to GHSA-962q-hwm5-52x5. 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-962q-hwm5-52x5 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-962q-hwm5-52x5 across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.