CVE-2026-81872: open-telemetry opentelemetry-go Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-81872 is a medium (CVSS 6.3) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in open-telemetry opentelemetry-go. EPSS estimates a 0.38% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 30.9% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 16-09-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 17-09-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

OpenTelemetry-Go is the Go implementation of OpenTelemetry. Prior to version 0.21.0, the go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/log BatchingProcessor can enter a tight CPU loop when attacker-driven log emission fills its asynchronous export buffer while the exporter is backpressured. NewBatchingProcessor wraps the exporter with newBufferExporter(exporter, 1), and the poll loop calls queue.TryDequeue and bufferExporter.EnqueueExport before immediately signaling pollTrigger whenever the queue remains at or above batchSize. Because a failed nonblocking EnqueueExport leaves the queue length unchanged, the processor repeatedly retries without waiting for its ticker, exhausting CPU and degrading or denying service in the embedding process. This issue is fixed in version 0.21.0.

• CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource ConsumptionThe product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
• CWE-834Excessive IterationThe product performs an iteration or loop without sufficiently limiting the number of times that the loop is executed.