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

High severity GitHub Reviewed Published Oct 14, 2022 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated May 16, 2025

Package

gomod golang.org/x/text (Go)

Affected versions

< 0.3.8

Patched versions

0.3.8

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

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Oct 14, 2022
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Oct 14, 2022
Reviewed Oct 28, 2022
Last updated May 16, 2025

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

This score estimates the probability of this vulnerability being exploited within the next 30 days. Data provided by FIRST.
(17th percentile)

Weaknesses

Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime

The product does not release a resource after its effective lifetime has ended, i.e., after the resource is no longer needed. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

CVE-2022-32149

GHSA ID

GHSA-69ch-w2m2-3vjp

Source code

Credits

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