Cosign malicious artifacts can cause machine-wide DoS

Exploitation

No confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next marks exploitation only from CISA KEV.

CVSS

4.2 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS

• CVE-2024-29903: 0.85% estimated exploitation activity in the next 30 days; percentile 58.26 (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-03). This is a model estimate, not proof of exploitation or customer exposure.

As published by the source; long descriptions are shortened.

Maliciously-crafted software artifacts can cause denial of service of the machine running Cosign, thereby impacting all services on the machine. The root cause is that Cosign creates slices based on the number of signatures, manifests or attestations in untrusted artifacts. As such, the untrusted artifact can control the amount of memory that Cosign allocates. As an example, these lines demonstrate the problem: https://github.com/sigstore/cosign/blob/286a98a4a99c1b2f32f84b0d560e324100312280/pkg/oci/remote/signatures.go#L56-L70 This Get() method gets the manifest of the image, allocates a slice equal to the length of the layers in the manifest, loops through the layers and adds a new signature to the slice. The exact issue is Cosign allocates excessive memory on the lines that creates a slice of the same length as the manifests. Remediation Update to the latest version of Cosign, where the number of attestations, signatures and manifests has been limited to a reasonable value. Cosign…

Published by the source

11 Apr 2024, 17:15 UTC

Last modified by the source

11 Apr 2024, 17:15 UTC

Source last checked

26 Oct 2026, 15:03 UTC

1. Revision 1 · created · 26 Oct 2026

   Published from ghsa record GHSA-95pr-fxf5-86gv

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# Patch Next advisory brief: CVE-2024-29903

Advisory: Cosign malicious artifacts can cause machine-wide DoS
IDs: CVE-2024-29903, GHSA-95pr-fxf5-86gv
Record: https://patchnext.com/advisories/cve-2024-29903 (revision 1, source checked 26 Oct 2026, 15:03 UTC)
Inventory: none attached. This brief comes from a public page and does not say whether any deployment is affected.
Severity: Medium (CVSS 4.2)
Exploitation: no confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next confirms exploitation only from CISA KEV.
Vendor response: Partial vendor fix; fixed versions by package: github.com/sigstore/cosign/v2 2.2.4. A vendor fix does not mean a deployment is fixed.

## Affected components
- Go github.com/sigstore/cosign: affected <= 2.2.3
- Go github.com/sigstore/cosign/v2: affected <= 2.2.3; fixed in 2.2.4

## Suggested inspection (read-only)
- Go github.com/sigstore/cosign: check the installed version with your package manager.
- Go github.com/sigstore/cosign/v2: check the installed version with your package manager.

## Supported action
No complete vendor fix is recorded. Follow the primary source's mitigation guidance and check this record again before closing anything.

## Required regression checks
- Run the test suite and a production build.
- Exercise the features that depend on github.com/sigstore/cosign, github.com/sigstore/cosign/v2.
- Repeat the inspection and confirm that only fixed versions remain installed.

## Rollback considerations
- Keep the previous lockfile and deployment artifact. Rolling back reinstates the vulnerable version, so apply any documented mitigation while you fix forward.

## Unresolved questions
- Which deployments run an affected version?
- Exploitation status can change. Check again before lowering the priority.
- Mark the work resolved only after the fixed version is verified in production.

## Sources
- Verified: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-95pr-fxf5-86gv (GitHub-reviewed advisory GHSA-95pr-fxf5-86gv lists affected ranges: Go github.com/sigstore/cosign >=0 =0 <=2.2.3)

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