GHSA-hfvc-g4fc-pqhx

opentelemetry-go: BSD kenv command not using absolute path enables PATH hijacking

At a glance

Published
Updated
CVE
CVE-2026-39883
Aliases
GO-2026-5426
CVSS_V4
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Description

## Summary The fix for GHSA-9h8m-3fm2-qjrq (CVE-2026-24051) changed the Darwin `ioreg` command to use an absolute path but left the BSD `kenv` command using a bare name, allowing the same PATH hijacking attack on BSD and Solaris platforms. ## Root Cause `sdk/resource/host_id.go` line 42: if result, err := r.execCommand("kenv", "-q", "smbios.system.uuid"); err == nil { Compare with the fixed Darwin path at line 58: result, err := r.execCommand("/usr/sbin/ioreg", "-rd1", "-c", "IOPlatformExpertDevice") The `execCommand` helper at `sdk/resource/host_id_exec.go` uses `exec.Command(name, arg...)` which searches `$PATH` when the command name contains no path separator. Affected platforms (per build tag in `host_id_bsd.go:4`): DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris. The `kenv` path is reached when `/etc/hostid` does not exist (line 38-40), which is common on FreeBSD systems. ## Attack 1. Attacker has local access to a system running a Go application that imports `go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk` 2. Attacker places a malicious `kenv` binary earlier in `$PATH` 3. Application initializes OpenTelemetry resource detection at startup 4. `hostIDReaderBSD.read()` calls `exec.Command("kenv", ...)` which resolves to the malicious binary 5. Arbitrary code executes in the context of the application Same attack vector and impact as CVE-2026-24051. ## Suggested Fix Use the absolute path: if result, err := r.execCommand("/bin/kenv", "-q", "smbios.system.uuid"); err == nil { On FreeBSD, `kenv` is located at `/bin/kenv`.

Affected packages

PackageVersions
Go · go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdkintroduced 1.15.0, fixed 1.43.0

References

Sources

SourceLicence
OSV.devCC-BY 4.0 — GitHub Advisory Database