VulnerabilityPublished 11 Mar 2026

CVE-2026-31866: open-feature flagd · Unthrottled Resource Allocation

Affects open-feature flagdSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.5 High : upgrade to 0.14.2 soon.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 11:52 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.5High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 37% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 0.14.2

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 11 Mar 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 30 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade flagd and open-feature/flagd to 0.14.2.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
open-featureflagd	Affected <0.14.2	Fixed in 0.14.2
GitHubopen-feature/flagd`pkg:github/open-feature/flagd`Other threats	Affected <0.14.2	Fixed in 0.14.2

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

The primary mitigation is to upgrade all deployments of flagd to version 0.14.2 or later, where this vulnerability is fixed. Until upgrades can be applied, organizations should implement strict network-level access controls to restrict access to flagd evaluation endpoints, such as placing flagd behind an authenticating reverse proxy or firewall rules limiting inbound traffic to trusted clients. Rate limiting and payload size restrictions should be enforced at the proxy or API gateway level to prevent oversized requests from reaching flagd. Monitoring memory usage and setting resource limits on containers running flagd can help detect and mitigate impact from attempted exploitation. Additionally, auditing deployment configurations to ensure flagd is not exposed directly to untrusted networks is critical. Security teams should also review logs for anomalous large requests to these endpoints and prepare incident response plans for potential DoS attacks. Finally, consider implementing application-layer authentication mechanisms if not already in place to reduce unauthorized access risk.

Description

flagd is a feature flag daemon with a Unix philosophy. Prior to 0.14.2, flagd exposes OFREP (/ofrep/v1/evaluate/...) and gRPC (evaluation.v1, evaluation.v2) endpoints for feature flag evaluation. These endpoints are designed to be publicly accessible by client applications. The evaluation context included in request payloads is read into memory without any size restriction. An attacker can send a single HTTP request with an arbitrarily large body, causing flagd to allocate a corresponding amount of memory. This leads to immediate memory exhaustion and process termination (e.g., OOMKill in Kubernetes environments). flagd does not natively enforce authentication on its evaluation endpoints. While operators may deploy flagd behind an authenticating reverse proxy or similar infrastructure, the endpoints themselves impose no access control by default. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.14.2.

Impact

This vulnerability can lead to denial of service (DoS) by causing the flagd process to crash due to memory exhaustion. In environments where flagd is critical for feature flag evaluation, such as microservices architectures or continuous deployment pipelines, this can disrupt application behavior, degrade user experience, and potentially halt deployment workflows. In Kubernetes or other container orchestration platforms, OOMKills triggered by this vulnerability can cause pod restarts, increasing instability and resource consumption. Since flagd endpoints are often publicly accessible by design, attackers can exploit this remotely without authentication, amplifying the risk of widespread disruption. Organizations relying on flagd for feature management may face operational outages, increased incident response costs, and potential cascading failures in dependent systems. The absence of authentication by default further exacerbates exposure, especially if proper network segmentation or reverse proxies are not in place.

CWE-770Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #25
The product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any intended restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated.
Requirements
Clearly specify the minimum and maximum expectations for capabilities, and dictate which behaviors are acceptable when resource allocation reaches limits.
Architecture and Design
Limit the amount of resources that are accessible to unprivileged users. Set per-user limits for resources. Allow the system administrator to define these limits. Be careful to avoid CWE-410.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V8.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
V13.4.1 (opens in a new tab)
V11.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Exponential Data Expansion (opens in a new tab)
Serialized Data Parameter Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Serialized Data with Nested Payloads (opens in a new tab)
Oversized Serialized Data Payloads (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 18 Mar 2026, 19:15 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-770

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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