CVE-2025-22868VulnerabilityPublished 9 Apr 2025Updated 25 Oct 2026

Red Hat Security Advisory: Red Hat build of OpenTelemetry 3.5.1 release

Affects Red HatSource GCVE Database

Mentioned vulnerabilities

Not known to be exploited : upgrade to 3.5.1 soon.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 06:15 UTC

Severity

High

Rated by Threat Radar · No CVSS score from NVD or the CNA

EPSS: 0.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 58% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 3.5.1

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 9 Apr 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: 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 2026-10-25.

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.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC 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 Red Hat to 3.5.1.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Red Hat Product Security Red Hat	Affected >=3.5.0 <3.5.1 Red Hat Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing 3.5.2 amd64 registry.redhat.io/rhosdt/opentelemetry-operator-bundle@sha256:ea3e5c6cc3342f0f0e9c4d8f6f4cc5ab278cd68fc6302737c533e7bdaa8ed12b_amd64 Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing 3.5.1 Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing 3.5.3 Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing 3.5	Fixed in 3.5.1

AI-suggested

Red Hat has released OpenTelemetry version 3.5.1 which includes fixes for CVE-2025-22868. Users should upgrade affected versions (>=3.5.0 <3.5.1) to 3.5.1 or later. Additionally, it is recommended to pre-validate any JWT payloads passed to the go-jose library to ensure they do not contain an excessive number of '.' characters to prevent memory exhaustion. Refer to Red Hat's official advisory and documentation for upgrade procedures and detailed mitigation steps. No breaking changes or deprecations affect the upgrade process.

Description

Release of Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing provides following security improvements, bug fixes, and new features. Breaking changes: * Nothing Deprecations: * Nothing Technology Preview features: * Nothing Enhancements: * Nothing Bug fixes: * https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-29786 * https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-27144 * https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-30204 * https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-22868 Known issues: * Nothing

Impact

The vulnerability allows an attacker to cause excessive memory consumption by sending numerous malformed JWT tokens with many '.' characters, leading to denial of service through memory exhaustion. There is no impact on confidentiality or integrity. The attack requires no privileges or user interaction and can be performed remotely over the network. This can disrupt availability of the affected Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing service.

Summary

CVE-2025-22868 is a vulnerability in the golang.org/x/oauth2/jws package's token parsing component, specifically due to the use of strings.Split(token, ".") to split JWT tokens. Malicious tokens with a large number of '.' characters can cause excessive memory consumption, leading to denial of service via memory exhaustion. Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing versions >=3.5.0 and <3.5.1 are affected. Red Hat released version 3.5.1 with fixes for this and other CVEs. The recommended mitigation is to pre-validate payloads passed to go-jose to ensure they do not contain excessive '.' characters. The vulnerability has a Red Hat CVSS v3 score of 7.5 (high severity) with network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges required, and high availability impact. No known exploits in the wild have been reported. The vendor advisory provides detailed remediation instructions and upgrade guidance.

CWE-1286Improper Validation of Syntactic Correctness of Input (opens in a new tab)
Base weakness
The product receives input that is expected to be well-formed - i.e., to comply with a certain syntax - but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input complies with the syntax.
Implementation · Input Validation
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
XML Security (opens in a new tab)
Mass Assignment (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V13.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.3 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
SQL Injection (opens in a new tab)
NoSQL Injection (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
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).
CWE-405Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification) (opens in a new tab)
Class weakness
The product does not properly control situations in which an adversary can cause the product to consume or produce excessive resources without requiring the adversary to invest equivalent work or otherwise prove authorization, i.e., the adversary's influence is "asymmetric."
Architecture and Design
An application must make resources available to a client commensurate with the client's access level.
Architecture and Design
An application must, at all times, keep track of allocated resources and meter their usage appropriately.
System Configuration
Consider disabling resource-intensive algorithms on the server side, such as Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 14 Aug 2026, 22:09 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-1286, CWE-770, CWE-405

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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