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CVE-2026-40182 — Vulnerability in...

MEDIUM

OpenTelemetry dotnet: OTLP exporter reads unbounded HTTP response bodies

Published April 23, 2026Updated September 10, 2026Source: osv

Summary

### Summary When exporting telemetry to a back-end/collector over gRPC or HTTP using OpenTelemetry Protocol format (OTLP), if the request results in a unsuccessful request (i.e. HTTP 4xx or 5xx), the response is read into memory with no upper-bound on the number of bytes consumed. This could cause memory exhaustion in the consuming application if the configured back-end/collector endpoint is attacker-controlled (or a network attacker can MitM the connection) and an extremely large body is returned by the response. ### Details https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/pull/6564 introduced a change to read the response body when a non-200 HTTP status code is received when exporting telemetry to aid debugging by operators so that the error response is included in the logs emitted by the exporter for both [gRPC](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/blob/640cf63628567b76b348b26988920dbc0b5c1662/src/OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol/Implementation/ExportClient/OtlpGrpcExportClient.cs#L123-L134) and [HTTP/protobuf](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/blob/640cf63628567b76b348b26988920dbc0b5c1662/src/OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol/Implementation/ExportClient/OtlpHttpExportClient.cs#L36-L41). An unintended consequence of this change is that the response body is [fully read into memory when received with no upper-bound](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/blob/640cf63628567b76b348b26988920dbc0b5c1662/src/OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol/Implementation/ExportClient/OtlpExportClient.cs#L68-L89). This vulnerability was surfaced during the investigation of GHSA-w8rr-5gcm-pp58. ### Impact If an application using the OTLP exporter is configured to use a back-end/collector endpoint that is attacker-controlled (or a network attacker can MitM the connection) and an extremely large body is returned by the response the application could have its memory exhausted and create a denial-of-service condition. ### Mitigation The application's configured back-end/collector endpoint needs to behave maliciously. If the collector/back-end is a well-behaved implementation response bodies should not be excessively large if a request error occurs. ### Workarounds None known. ### Remediation [#7017](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet/pull/7017) updates the OTLP exporter for both gRPC and HTTP to: - Limit the number of bytes read from the response body in an error condition to 4MiB (see https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-proto/pull/781); - Only attempt to read the response body if OpenTelemetry error logging is enabled.

Advisory Timeline

  • First published April 23, 2026 (172 days ago).
  • Last revised September 10, 2026 — 139 days after initial publication.

Remediation

Upgrade to the fixed version using your package manager.

NuGet
Update OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol to 1.15.2 or later
dotnet add package OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol --version 1.15.2

After upgrading, run your dependency scanner again to confirm the vulnerability is resolved.

Affected Packages (1)

Affects 1 ecosystem: nuget (1).

PackageEcosystemAffectedFixed In
OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol
nuget
1.13.1, 1.14.0, 1.15.0, 1.15.11.15.2

Vulnerability Classification

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) identifiers for this vulnerability type.

CVSS Score Breakdown

What the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) 5.3 score means for each attack dimension.

Attack Vector
Adjacent
Attack Complexity
High
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-40182?
OpenTelemetry dotnet: OTLP exporter reads unbounded HTTP response bodies This vulnerability has been assigned a severity rating of MEDIUM (CVSS score: 5.3/10).
How do I check if my project is affected by CVE-2026-40182?
CVE-2026-40182 affects OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol. Use GeekWala's free vulnerability scanner to check your dependencies against CVE-2026-40182 and 200,000+ other known vulnerabilities.

Severity & Exploitability

CVSS Score
5.3

Exploitation requires specific conditions or has limited impact. Remediate within weeks.

Also Known As

GHSA-q834-8qmm-v933

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