CVE-2026-118259 opentelemetry-java: Quadratic CPU consumption in W3C tracestate parsing
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-118259?
CVE-2026-118259 is a medium-severity vulnerability in open-telemetry opentelemetry-java, published on 28 Oct 2026.
Official 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.
Weakness: CWE-1333
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-118259?
2 open source packages ship an affected version, including io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-api.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-api Maven | All versions | 1.67.0 |
io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-api Maven | All versions | 1.67.0 |
How do I fix CVE-2026-118259?
Upgrade io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-api to 1.67.0 or later.
Is CVE-2026-118259 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-118259 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as ECHO-98e1-3ead-db23, GHSA-ccrj-gw8r-854m.