The flaw lies in ORAS CLI’s recursive referrer traversal, which fails to record visited descriptors. A registry that supplies a cyclic referrer graph can cause the client to recurse indefinitely, with memory usage growing without bound. The result is a client‑side denial of service that can consume CPU and memory, potentially hanging automation or CI/CD pipelines. The vulnerability does not grant code execution, artifact substitution, or integrity bypass.

The issue affects the ORAS project’s ORAS command‑line interface and library in versions up to and including 1.3.2. The discover command, which performs unlimited recursion by default, and the backup and restore workflows that count referrers are impacted. Any user running these commands against a malicious or untrusted OCI registry is at risk.

The CVSS score of 6.5 indicates a moderate severity vulnerability. EPSS information is not available, and the entry is not listed in CISA’s KEV catalog. The attack requires only a malicious registry that provides cyclic referrer data; an automated CI/CD job that invokes ORAS discover, backup, or restore can trigger the recursion. Because the flaw resides entirely on the client side and no special privileges are needed, the exploitation risk is considered moderate to high for environments that interact with untrusted registries.