CVE-2026-55588

ORAS CLI: Cyclic Referrer Graph Can Cause Unbounded Recursion and Resource Consumption

Published Aug 25, 2026 CVSS 3.1 · 6.5 Medium EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
Description
ORAS (OCI Registry As Storage) is a CLI and library for managing artifacts in OCI registries. In ORAS CLI versions up to and including 1.3.2, the recursive referrer traversal does not track visited descriptors, so a malicious OCI registry that returns a cyclic referrer graph causes unbounded recursion and memory growth. This affects oras discover, whose recursive traversal is enabled by default because the --depth option defaults to 0 (unlimited), as well as the recursive referrer counting used by the oras backup and oras restore workflows. A cyclic graph can be as simple as A referring to B and B referring back to A. A malicious registry can use this to cause a client-side denial of service, exhausting CPU and memory and hanging automation or CI/CD pipelines that run ORAS against untrusted registry metadata. The vulnerability does not extend to code execution, artifact substitution, or integrity bypass. This issue has been fixed in version 1.3.3.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-298f-872v-2rcx ORAS CLI: Cyclic Referrer Graph Can Cause Unbounded Recursion and Resource Consumption
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description ORAS (OCI Registry As Storage) is a CLI and library for managing artifacts in OCI registries. In ORAS CLI versions up to and including 1.3.2, the recursive referrer traversal does not track visited descriptors, so a malicious OCI registry that returns a cyclic referrer graph causes unbounded recursion and memory growth. This affects oras discover, whose recursive traversal is enabled by default because the --depth option defaults to 0 (unlimited), as well as the recursive referrer counting used by the oras backup and oras restore workflows. A cyclic graph can be as simple as A referring to B and B referring back to A. A malicious registry can use this to cause a client-side denial of service, exhausting CPU and memory and hanging automation or CI/CD pipelines that run ORAS against untrusted registry metadata. The vulnerability does not extend to code execution, artifact substitution, or integrity bypass. This issue has been fixed in version 1.3.3.
Title ORAS CLI: Cyclic Referrer Graph Can Cause Unbounded Recursion and Resource Consumption
Weaknesses CWE-400
CWE-674
CWE-835
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 6.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}

Subscriptions

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Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
GitHub_M
Published
Updated
Aug 27, 2026, 2:35 PM
Reserved
Jun 16, 2026, 11:18 PM
Status
Deferred
Published
Aug 25, 2026, 9:17 PM
Modified
Sep 9, 2026, 9:07 PM