GHSA-r6c9-g6q5-qrf9MediumCVSS 5.9
OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation: CPU-mismatch fallback uses 256-byte buffer with 8KB size
🔗 CVE IDs covered (1)
📋 Description
### Summary
The per-CPU message-buffer fallback path uses a 256-byte backup buffer but preserves the original payload size, which can be up to 8KB. If a CPU mismatch occurs, OBI can read beyond the fallback buffer and leak adjacent memory into telemetry.
### Details
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation/blob/032473449b53d9f02ec4619d4f5b84e6a81db362/bpf/common/http_buf_size.h#L4-L7
`k_kprobes_http2_buf_size` is defined as 256 bytes, the size of the fallback buffer.
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation/blob/032473449b53d9f02ec4619d4f5b84e6a81db362/bpf/common/msg_buffer.h#L12-L36
Introduces 8KB per-CPU buffer and 256-byte `fallback_buf` in `msg_buffer_t`, creating a size mismatch for fallback use.
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation/blob/032473449b53d9f02ec4619d4f5b84e6a81db362/bpf/generictracer/k_tracer.c#L370-L394
On CPU mismatch, `fallback_buf `is used but size is still set to `m_buf->real_size` (up to 8KB) and passed downstream.
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation/blob/032473449b53d9f02ec4619d4f5b84e6a81db362/bpf/generictracer/protocol_http.h#L412-L441
`bytes_len (from m_buf->real_size)` is used to read payload data from `u_buf`; if `u_buf` is the 256B fallback, this can over-read and leak memory into telemetry.
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation/blob/032473449b53d9f02ec4619d4f5b84e6a81db362/bpf/tpinjector/tpinjector.c#L192-L206
`real_size `is set up to 8192 bytes and stored with `cpu_id`; `fallback_buf `only contains 256 bytes.
### PoC
Local testing with an AddressSanitizer user-space PoC reproduced the same class of size-mismatch over-read as the vulnerable fallback-buffer path. That result is sufficient to ground the advisory in a fresh local reproduction even though the exact end-to-end eBPF path still depends on host BPF capabilities.
To reproduce the validated behavior locally:
1. create a struct that models `fallback_buf[256]` and `real_size`
2. populate only the 256-byte fallback buffer
3. simulate the CPU mismatch path by using the fallback buffer as the source pointer while preserving a much larger `real_size`
4. perform a read of `real_size` bytes from that 256-byte backing store under ASan
An equivalent reproducer is:
```c
// save as /tmp/poc_msgbuf_oob.c
#include <stdint.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
struct msg_buffer {
unsigned char fallback_buf[256];
uint16_t pos;
uint16_t real_size;
uint32_t cpu_id;
};
int main(void) {
struct msg_buffer m = {0};
unsigned char sink[8192];
memset(m.fallback_buf, 'A', sizeof(m.fallback_buf));
m.real_size = 4096;
memcpy(sink, m.fallback_buf, m.real_size);
printf("copied %u bytes from a 256-byte fallback buffer\n", m.real_size);
return 0;
}
```
Compile and run with ASan:
```bash
cc -fsanitize=address -O1 -g -o /tmp/poc_msgbuf_oob /tmp/poc_msgbuf_oob.c
ASAN_OPTIONS=abort_on_error=1 /tmp/poc_msgbuf_oob
```
Expected result:
```text
AddressSanitizer: heap-buffer-overflow or stack-buffer-overflow
```
That user-space PoC matches the size-mismatch condition in the vulnerable code path, even though the exact end-to-end eBPF runtime path still requires host BPF attach/load capability.
### Impact
This is a confidentiality issue in the HTTP tracing path. The vulnerable read occurs in OBI's local fallback-buffer handling when context propagation is enabled, the `tpinjector` sock_msg path is active, HTTP large-buffer capture is configured with a non-zero size, and a CPU mismatch occurs between producer and consumer contexts. Under those conditions, OBI can over-read from the fallback buffer and export unrelated memory through telemetry.
🎯 Affected products1
- go/go.opentelemetry.io/obi:< 0.9.0