Every uncached /avatar/:hash request spawns a goroutine that refreshes the Gravatar image. If the refresh sits in the 10-slot worker queue longer than three seconds, the handler times out and stops listening for the result, so that goroutine blocks forever trying to send on an unbuffered channel. Sustained traffic with random hashes keeps tripping this timeout, so goroutine count grows linearly, eventually exhausting memory and causing Grafana to crash on some systems.
History

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 09:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Every uncached /avatar/:hash request spawns a goroutine that refreshes the Gravatar image. If the refresh sits in the 10-slot worker queue longer than three seconds, the handler times out and stops listening for the result, so that goroutine blocks forever trying to send on an unbuffered channel. Sustained traffic with random hashes keeps tripping this timeout, so goroutine count grows linearly, eventually exhausting memory and causing Grafana to crash on some systems.
Title Unauthenticated DoS: avatar cache leaks goroutines when /avatar/:hash requests time out
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 7.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}


cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GRAFANA

Published:

Updated: 2026-01-27T14:29:08.671Z

Reserved: 2026-01-05T09:26:06.214Z

Link: CVE-2026-21720

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-01-27T09:15:48.490

Modified: 2026-01-27T09:15:48.490

Link: CVE-2026-21720

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.