CVE-2023-27483
fieldpath's Paved.SetValue allows growing arrays up to arbitrary sizes in crossplane-runtime
crossplane-runtime is a set of go libraries used to build Kubernetes controllers in Crossplane and its related stacks. An out of memory panic vulnerability has been discovered in affected versions. Applications that use the Paved type's SetValue method with user provided input without proper validation might use excessive amounts of memory and cause an out of memory panic. In the fieldpath package, the Paved.SetValue method sets a value on the Paved object according to the provided path, without any validation. This allows setting values in slices at any provided index, which grows the target array up to the requested index, the index is currently capped at max uint32 (4294967295) given how indexes are parsed, but that is still an unnecessarily large value. If callers are not validating paths' indexes on their own, which most probably are not going to do, given that the input is parsed directly in the SetValue method, this could allow users to consume arbitrary amounts of memory. Applications that do not use the Paved type's SetValue method are not affected. This issue has been addressed in versions 0.16.1 and 0.19.2. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade can parse and validate the path before passing it to the SetValue method of the Paved type, constraining the index size as deemed appropriate.
Attack profile
How easy it is to exploit
- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- High
- Privileges needed
- None
- User interaction
- None
What an attacker can affect
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
Exploit likelihood
What each source reports
CVE List Score used
5.9
fieldpath's Paved.SetValue allows growing arrays up to arbitrary sizes in crossplane-runtime
crossplane-runtime is a set of go libraries used to build Kubernetes controllers in Crossplane and its related stacks. An out of memory panic vulnerability has been discovered in affected versions. Applications that use the Paved type's SetValue method with user provided input without proper validation might use excessive amounts of memory and cause an out of memory panic. In the fieldpath package, the Paved.SetValue method sets a value on the Paved object according to the provided path, without any validation. This allows setting values in slices at any provided index, which grows the target array up to the requested index, the index is currently capped at max uint32 (4294967295) given how indexes are parsed, but that is still an unnecessarily large value. If callers are not validating paths' indexes on their own, which most probably are not going to do, given that the input is parsed directly in the SetValue method, this could allow users to consume arbitrary amounts of memory. Applications that do not use the Paved type's SetValue method are not affected. This issue has been addressed in versions 0.16.1 and 0.19.2. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade can parse and validate the path before passing it to the SetValue method of the Paved type, constraining the index size as deemed appropriate.
- Record
CVE-2023-27483- CVSS 3.1
- 5.9 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-400, CWE-20
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
EUVDEUVD-2023-1111
5.9
crossplane-runtime is a set of go libraries used to build Kubernetes controllers in Crossplane and its related stacks. An out of memory panic vulnerability has been discovered in affected versions. Applications that use the Paved type's SetValue method with user provided input without proper validation might use excessive amounts of memory and cause an out of memory panic. In the fieldpath package, the Paved.SetValue method sets a value on the Paved object according to the provided path, without any validation. This allows setting values in slices at any provided index, which grows the target array up to the requested index, the index is currently capped at max uint32 (4294967295) given how indexes are parsed, but that is still an unnecessarily large value. If callers are not validating paths' indexes on their own, which most probably are not going to do, given that the input is parsed directly in the SetValue method, this could allow users to consume arbitrary amounts of memory. Applications that do not use the Paved type's SetValue method are not affected. This issue has been addressed in versions 0.16.1 and 0.19.2. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade can parse and validate the path before passing it to the SetValue method of the Paved type, constraining the index size as deemed appropriate.
- Record
EUVD-2023-1111- CVSS 3.1
- 5.9 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Updated
- 2026-11-02
GitHub AdvisoriesGHSA-vfvj-3m3g-m532
5.9
fieldpath's Paved.SetValue allows growing arrays up to arbitrary sizes in crossplane-runtime
Summary
Fuzz testing on crossplane/crossplane, by Ada Logics and sponsored by the CNCF, identified input to a function in the fieldpath package that can cause an out of memory panic. Applications that use the Paved type's SetValue method with user provided input without proper validation might use excessive amounts of memory and cause an out of memory panic.
Details
In the fieldpath package, the SetValue method of the Paved type sets a value on the inner object according to the provided path, without validating it first. This allows setting values in slices at any specific index and the code will grow the target array up to the required size. The index is currently capped at max uint32 (4294967295) given how indexes are parsed, but that is still an unnecessarily large value.
Workaround
Users can parse and validate the path before passing it to the SetValue method of the Paved type, constraining the index size as deemed appropriate.
Credits
Disclosed by Ada Logics in a fuzzing audit sponsored by CNCF.
- Record
GHSA-vfvj-3m3g-m532- CVSS 3.1
- 5.9 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-20, CWE-400
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
NVD
5.9
crossplane-runtime is a set of go libraries used to build Kubernetes controllers in Crossplane and its related stacks. An out of memory panic vulnerability has been discovered in affected versions. Applications that use the Paved type's SetValue method with user provided input without proper validation might use excessive amounts of memory and cause an out of memory panic. In the fieldpath package, the Paved.SetValue method sets a value on the Paved object according to the provided path, without any validation. This allows setting values in slices at any provided index, which grows the target array up to the requested index, the index is currently capped at max uint32 (4294967295) given how indexes are parsed, but that is still an unnecessarily large value. If callers are not validating paths' indexes on their own, which most probably are not going to do, given that the input is parsed directly in the SetValue method, this could allow users to consume arbitrary amounts of memory. Applications that do not use the Paved type's SetValue method are not affected. This issue has been addressed in versions 0.16.1 and 0.19.2. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade can parse and validate the path before passing it to the SetValue method of the Paved type, constraining the index size as deemed appropriate.
- Record
CVE-2023-27483- CVSS 3.1
- 5.9 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - CVSS 3.1
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-20, CWE-400
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSV
5.9
fieldpath's Paved.SetValue allows growing arrays up to arbitrary sizes in crossplane-runtime
crossplane-runtime is a set of go libraries used to build Kubernetes controllers in Crossplane and its related stacks. An out of memory panic vulnerability has been discovered in affected versions. Applications that use the Paved type's SetValue method with user provided input without proper validation might use excessive amounts of memory and cause an out of memory panic. In the fieldpath package, the Paved.SetValue method sets a value on the Paved object according to the provided path, without any validation. This allows setting values in slices at any provided index, which grows the target array up to the requested index, the index is currently capped at max uint32 (4294967295) given how indexes are parsed, but that is still an unnecessarily large value. If callers are not validating paths' indexes on their own, which most probably are not going to do, given that the input is parsed directly in the SetValue method, this could allow users to consume arbitrary amounts of memory. Applications that do not use the Paved type's SetValue method are not affected. This issue has been addressed in versions 0.16.1 and 0.19.2. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade can parse and validate the path before passing it to the SetValue method of the Paved type, constraining the index size as deemed appropriate.
- Record
CVE-2023-27483- CVSS 3.1
- 5.9 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-20, CWE-400
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSVGHSA-vfvj-3m3g-m532
5.9
fieldpath's Paved.SetValue allows growing arrays up to arbitrary sizes in crossplane-runtime
Summary
Fuzz testing on crossplane/crossplane, by Ada Logics and sponsored by the CNCF, identified input to a function in the fieldpath package that can cause an out of memory panic. Applications that use the Paved type's SetValue method with user provided input without proper validation might use excessive amounts of memory and cause an out of memory panic.
Details
In the fieldpath package, the SetValue method of the Paved type sets a value on the inner object according to the provided path, without validating it first. This allows setting values in slices at any specific index and the code will grow the target array up to the required size. The index is currently capped at max uint32 (4294967295) given how indexes are parsed, but that is still an unnecessarily large value.
Workaround
Users can parse and validate the path before passing it to the SetValue method of the Paved type, constraining the index size as deemed appropriate.
Credits
Disclosed by Ada Logics in a fuzzing audit sponsored by CNCF.
- Record
GHSA-vfvj-3m3g-m532- CVSS 3.1
- 5.9 Medium
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-20, CWE-400
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSVGO-2023-1623 No score
Out-of-memory panic in github.com/crossplane/crossplane-runtime
An out of memory panic vulnerability exists in the crossplane-runtime libraries.
Applications that use the Paved type's SetValue method with user-provided input that is not properly validated might use excessive amounts of memory and cause an out of memory panic.
In the fieldpath package, the Paved.SetValue method sets a value on the Paved object according to the provided path, without any validation. This allows setting values in slices at any provided index, which grows the target array up to the requested index. The index is currently capped at max uint32 (4294967295), a large value. If callers do not validate paths' indexes on their own, this could allow users to consume arbitrary amounts of memory.
Applications that do not use the Paved type's SetValue method are not affected.
Users unable to upgrade can work around this issue by parsing and validating the path before passing it to the SetValue method of the Paved type, constraining the index size as deemed appropriate.
- Record
GO-2023-1623- Updated
- 2026-11-02
Affected products
Affected packages
| Package | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|
github.com/crossplane/crossplane-runtimeGo |
0.17.0 up to 0.19.2 | 0.19.2 |
github.com/crossplane/crossplane-runtimeGo |
0.6.0 up to 0.16.1 | 0.16.1 |
github.com/crossplane/crossplane-runtimeGo |
0.6.0 up to 0.16.1, 0.17.0 up to 0.19.2 | 0.16.10.19.2 |
History
| Recorded | Changed | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| first indexed | CVE List, EUVD, GitHub Advisories, NVD, OSV |
Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.
In short
CVE-2023-27483 is a medium vulnerability (CVSS 5.9) in Crossplane Crossplane-runtime, published March 9, 2023. No source lists public exploit code. EPSS puts the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days at 0.80%, the 56th percentile. Fixed in github.com/crossplane/crossplane-runtime 0.19.2.
References
github.com/crossplane/crossplane-runtime/security/advisories/GHSA-vfvj-3m3g-m532
github.com/crossplane/crossplane-runtime/commit/53508a9f4374604db140dd8ab2fa52276441e738
nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-27483
pkg.go.dev/vuln/GO-2023-1623
github.com/crossplane/crossplane-runtime/commit/f67177024d906aaf5e13ee7cd470b4e87a9fef40
github.com/advisories/GHSA-vfvj-3m3g-m532
github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2023/27xxx/CVE-2023-27483.json
github.com/crossplane/crossplane-runtime