Summary
This handler wrapper
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// NewHandler wraps the passed handler, functioning like middleware, in a span |
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// named after the operation and with any provided Options. |
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func NewHandler(handler http.Handler, operation string, opts ...Option) http.Handler { |
out of the box adds labels
http.user_agent
http.method
that have unbound cardinality. It leads to the server's potential memory exhaustion when many malicious requests are sent to it.
Details
HTTP header User-Agent or HTTP method for requests can be easily set by an attacker to be random and long. The library internally uses httpconv.ServerRequest that records every value for HTTP method and User-Agent.
PoC
Send many requests with long randomly generated HTTP methods or/and User agents (e.g. a million) and observe how memory consumption increases during it.
Impact
In order to be affected, the program has to configure a metrics pipeline, use otelhttp.NewHandler wrapper, and does not filter any unknown HTTP methods or User agents on the level of CDN, LB, previous middleware, etc.
Others
It is similar to already reported vulnerabilities
Workaround for affected versions
As a workaround to stop being affected otelhttp.WithFilter() can be used, but it requires manual careful configuration to not log certain requests entirely.
For convenience and safe usage of this library, it should by default mark with the label unknown
non-standard HTTP methods and User agents to show that such requests were made but do not increase cardinality. In case someone wants to stay with the current behavior, library API should allow to enable it.
The other possibility is to disable HTTP metrics instrumentation by passing otelhttp.WithMeterProvider
option with noop.NewMeterProvider
.
Solution provided by upgrading
In PR #4277, released with package version 0.44.0, the values collected for attribute http.request.method
were changed to be restricted to a set of well-known values and other high cardinality attributes were removed.
References
Summary
This handler wrapper
opentelemetry-go-contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp/handler.go
Lines 63 to 65 in 5f7e6ad
out of the box adds labels
http.user_agent
http.method
that have unbound cardinality. It leads to the server's potential memory exhaustion when many malicious requests are sent to it.
Details
HTTP header User-Agent or HTTP method for requests can be easily set by an attacker to be random and long. The library internally uses httpconv.ServerRequest that records every value for HTTP method and User-Agent.
PoC
Send many requests with long randomly generated HTTP methods or/and User agents (e.g. a million) and observe how memory consumption increases during it.
Impact
In order to be affected, the program has to configure a metrics pipeline, use otelhttp.NewHandler wrapper, and does not filter any unknown HTTP methods or User agents on the level of CDN, LB, previous middleware, etc.
Others
It is similar to already reported vulnerabilities
Workaround for affected versions
As a workaround to stop being affected otelhttp.WithFilter() can be used, but it requires manual careful configuration to not log certain requests entirely.
For convenience and safe usage of this library, it should by default mark with the label
unknown
non-standard HTTP methods and User agents to show that such requests were made but do not increase cardinality. In case someone wants to stay with the current behavior, library API should allow to enable it.The other possibility is to disable HTTP metrics instrumentation by passing
otelhttp.WithMeterProvider
option withnoop.NewMeterProvider
.Solution provided by upgrading
In PR #4277, released with package version 0.44.0, the values collected for attribute
http.request.method
were changed to be restricted to a set of well-known values and other high cardinality attributes were removed.References