Medium severity · published Oct 28, 2026
CVE-2026-118259
opentelemetry-java: Quadratic CPU consumption in W3C tracestate parsing
New
5.3
CVSS
–
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
opentelemetry-java is the Java implementation of the OpenTelemetry API for recording telemetry, and SDK for managing telemetry recorded by the API. Prior to 1.67.0, W3CTraceContextPropagator.extract() uses regex delimiter processing that can exhibit quadratic backtracking while parsing tracestate headers containing long runs of spaces or tabs without a following comma. An unauthenticated attacker whose headers reach extraction can repeatedly block request or event-loop threads and cause excessive CPU consumption, with practical impact bounded by ingress header-size limits, proxy configuration, and threading. This issue is fixed in version 1.67.0.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
OP
opentelemetry-java · open-telemetry
< 1.67.0 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-118259
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-118259
x_refsource_CONFIRM
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java/security/advisories/GHSA-ccrj-gw8r-854m
x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java/pull/8914
x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java/commit/ba4dfea91647d1ef596975db5d7197681df3c0f5
x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java/commit/cc4f5f22aed0d69369941cde8029e73507cf438f
x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java/releases/tag/v1.67.0
More from opentelemetry-java
5.3
CVE-2026-45292
opentelemetry-java: Unbounded Memory Allocation in W3C Baggage Propagation
