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Bump grpc-go to v1.82.1 in xk6 module for GHSA-hrxh-6v49-42gf - #550

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cleverchuk merged 2 commits into
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copilot/fix-grpc-go-vulnerabilities
Jul 23, 2026
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Bump grpc-go to v1.82.1 in xk6 module for GHSA-hrxh-6v49-42gf#550
cleverchuk merged 2 commits into
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copilot/fix-grpc-go-vulnerabilities

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Copilot AI commented Jul 23, 2026

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Tl;dr: Upgraded google.golang.org/grpc in long-running-test-arch/xk6 from v1.80.0 to patched v1.82.1 (lowest non-vulnerable), with minimal dependency graph churn.

Context:

This addresses Dependabot alert GHSA-hrxh-6v49-42gf (xDS RBAC fail-open/panic paths and HTTP/2 rapid reset DoS in grpc-go) by moving off the vulnerable version in the affected manifest.

  • Dependency remediation

    • Updated long-running-test-arch/xk6/go.mod to google.golang.org/grpc v1.82.1.
    • Regenerated go.sum entries accordingly (including transitive genproto bumps from module resolution).
  • Reachability Assessment

    • Scoped search of repository Go code found only long-running-test-arch/xk6/k6_otel.go, using otlpmetricgrpc.New(...) (client exporter path).
    • No usage found of grpc server/xDS RBAC policy translation APIs or related policy fields (Metadata, RequestedServerName, NOT unsupported-field wrappers).
    • Conclusion: advisory-specific vulnerable paths are not directly reachable in this code path; update is primarily scanner-driven hardening.
    • Confidence: High.
// long-running-test-arch/xk6/go.mod
require (
    // ...
    google.golang.org/grpc v1.82.1 // indirect
)

Test Plan:

  • go test ./... in long-running-test-arch/xk6
  • go list -m google.golang.org/grpc confirms v1.82.1

Test services data

  1. e-1712644058766987264
  2. e-1712643928659124224
  3. e-1742334541200846848
  4. e-1777406072376840192
Original prompt

This section details the Dependabot vulnerability alert you should resolve

<alert_title>gRPC-Go: xDS RBAC and HTTP/2 Vulnerabilities</alert_title>
<alert_description>Multiple security vulnerabilities have been identified and addressed in grpc-go affecting the xDS RBAC authorization engine (internal/xds/rbac) and the HTTP/2 transport server implementation (internal/transport). These vulnerabilities could result in:

  • Authorization Bypass (Fail-Open) when translating xDS RBAC policies containing Metadata or RequestedServerName fields.
  • Denial of Service (High CPU Consumption) due to an HTTP/2 Rapid Reset mitigation bypass during client-initiated stream resets.
  • Denial of Service (Server Panic) when parsing crafted xDS RBAC policies containing NOT rules around unsupported fields.

Impact

What kind of vulnerability is it? Who is impacted?

xDS RBAC Authorization Bypass via Metadata & RequestedServerName matchers

  • Affected Component: xDS RBAC
  • Impact: When building policy matchers for gRPC RBAC from xDS configurations, unsupported permission and principal rules (specifically Metadata and RequestedServerName) were silently ignored and treated as no-ops.
    • If an authorization policy relied purely on these matchers for access control, treating those rules as no-ops effectively removed the restrictions.
  • If these unsupported rules were nested inside logical NOT rules (Permission_NotRule / Principal_NotId) or multi-condition OR/AND rules, silently dropping them changed the boolean logic flow of the authorization engine.

As a result, policy evaluation decisions could fail open, allowing unauthorized clients to access protected gRPC services or resources.

HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Mitigation Bypass / Denial of Service via Stream Aborts

  • Affected Component: HTTP/2 transport
  • Impact: Earlier mitigations in grpc-go for HTTP/2 Rapid Reset only applied threshold checks to items that directly resulted in control frames being written back to the wire, such as SETTINGS ACKs or server-initiated RST_STREAMs.

When a client initiated a rapid flood of stream creation (HEADERS) immediately followed by stream termination RST_STREAM, items queued up in the control buffer without counting against the transport response frame threshold. An attacker can repeatedly trigger this flood sequence to bypass reader blocking, resulting in high CPU usage, and Denial of Service (DoS).

Denial of Service (Panic) in xDS RBAC Engine via Unsupported Fields inside NOT Rules

  • Affected Component: xDS RBAC
  • Impact: The xDS RBAC policy translators recursively generate matchers for nested rules. When a NOT rule wrapped an unsupported or unhandled field (such as SourcedMetadata), the recursive step returned an empty matcher. This could result in a runtime panic when the RBAC engine attempts to authorize an incoming request.

An attacker or misconfigured/malicious xDS management server delivering an LDS/RDS update containing a NOT rule around an unhandled field causes the gRPC server process to crash immediately (CWE-248 / Denial of Service).

Patches

Has the problem been patched? What versions should users upgrade to?

All three issues have been fixed in master and will be released in 1.82.1 shortly.

Workarounds

Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?

If upgrading grpc-go immediately is not possible, apply the following workarounds based on your deployment architecture:

  • For xDS RBAC Vulnerabilities & Panics: Ensure that upstream xDS management servers do not push RBAC policies containing Metadata, RequestedServerName, or NOT rules wrapping unsupported fields (such as SourcedMetadata) to grpc-go servers.
  • For HTTP/2 Rapid Reset DOS: Configure upstream reverse proxies or load balancers (such as Envoy) with strict HTTP/2 max_concurrent_streams limits and active rate limiting on RST_STREAM frequency per connection.

Severity

Vulnerability Qualitative Severity Approximate CVSS v3.1 Score Primary Impact
xDS RBAC Authorization Bypass High 8.2 Unauthorized Access / Fail-Open
HTTP/2 Rapid Reset DOS Bypass High 7.5 High CPU Consumption / Denial of Service
xDS RBAC Engine Server Panic Medium 5.9 Process Crash / Denial of Service

high
GHSA-hrxh-6v49-42gf
google.golang.org/grpc
go
<vulnerable_versions>= v1.80.0</vulnerable_versions>
<patched_version>1.82.1</patched_version>
<manifest_path>long-running-test-arch/xk6/go.mod</manifest_path>

https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/security/advisories/GHSA-hrxh-6v49-42gf https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/pull/9236 https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go/commit/4ea465d4ab98013f72a142fe0fc89c19770b2935 https://git...

Copilot AI changed the title [WIP] Fix gRPC-Go xDS RBAC and HTTP/2 vulnerabilities Bump grpc-go to v1.82.1 in xk6 module for GHSA-hrxh-6v49-42gf Jul 23, 2026
Copilot AI requested a review from cleverchuk July 23, 2026 14:46
@cleverchuk
cleverchuk marked this pull request as ready for review July 23, 2026 19:32
@cleverchuk
cleverchuk requested review from a team as code owners July 23, 2026 19:32
Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings July 23, 2026 19:32

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Pull request overview

Updates the long-running-test-arch/xk6 Go module dependencies to remediate Dependabot alert GHSA-hrxh-6v49-42gf by moving google.golang.org/grpc off a vulnerable version while keeping dependency churn minimal.

Changes:

  • Bumped google.golang.org/grpc from v1.80.0 to v1.82.1 (indirect) in long-running-test-arch/xk6/go.mod.
  • Updated go.sum with the new grpc and related genproto checksums.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 1 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

File Description
long-running-test-arch/xk6/go.mod Pins google.golang.org/grpc to v1.82.1 (and updates related genproto pseudo-versions) to address the advisory.
long-running-test-arch/xk6/go.sum Adds checksums for the updated module versions used by the new dependency graph.

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LGTM

@cleverchuk
cleverchuk merged commit 22bc8e8 into main Jul 23, 2026
18 checks passed
@cleverchuk
cleverchuk deleted the copilot/fix-grpc-go-vulnerabilities branch July 23, 2026 20:13
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4 participants