golang.org/x/text/language Denial of service via crafted Accept-Language header

Description

The BCP 47 tag parser has quadratic time complexity due to inherent aspects of its design. Since the parser is, by design, exposed to untrusted user input, this can be leveraged to force a program to consume significant time parsing Accept-Language headers. The parser cannot be easily rewritten to fix this behavior for various reasons. Instead the solution implemented in this CL is to limit the total complexity of tags passed into ParseAcceptLanguage by limiting the number of dashes in the string to 1000. This should be more than enough for the majority of real world use cases, where the number of tags being sent is likely to be in the single digits.

Specific Go Packages Affected

golang.org/x/text/language

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
high
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2022-10-14 19:00:40 UTC
Updated
2025-05-16 02:08:37 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2022-10-28 20:11:26 UTC
NVD published
2022-10-14

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.05% 17.12%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
7.5 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-772 Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime

Credits

  • rbeuque74 (analyst)

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
go golang.org/x/text < 0.3.8 0.3.8

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence