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malcontent: Error-path cleanup gap can leak scanners and fds and degrade availability

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Feb 27, 2026 in chainguard-dev/malcontent • Updated Mar 2, 2026

Package

gomod github.com/chainguard-dev/malcontent (Go)

Affected versions

< 1.21.0

Patched versions

1.21.0

Description

Several extraction and scanning code paths registered late defers which could leak resources and exhaust system resources.

This report is an aggregate of these individual reports for the affected code:

Advisory Affected File
GHSA-jjgh-mc5q-gch7 pkg/action/scan.go
GHSA-mwmf-fxh2-w4x7 pkg/archive/deb.go
GHSA-p8j3-rpf5-gwv3 pkg/archive/gzip.go
GHSA-qfh4-7f5v-75gq pkg/archive/zlib.go
GHSA-wxxf-r586-5rf5 pkg/archive/bzip2.go

Fix: #1354, #1355, #1356, #1361

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Oleh Konko from 1seal for discovering and reporting all six of these issues.

References

@egibs egibs published to chainguard-dev/malcontent Feb 27, 2026
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Mar 2, 2026
Reviewed Mar 2, 2026
Last updated Mar 2, 2026

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

EPSS score

Weaknesses

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

No known CVE

GHSA ID

GHSA-54p8-x2m9-c593

Source code

Credits

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