Skip to content

Indicate that exception.message attribute may contain sensitive information#3310

Merged
lmolkova merged 5 commits intoopen-telemetry:mainfrom
lmolkova:exception-message-sensitive
Jan 23, 2026
Merged

Indicate that exception.message attribute may contain sensitive information#3310
lmolkova merged 5 commits intoopen-telemetry:mainfrom
lmolkova:exception-message-sensitive

Conversation

@lmolkova
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

@lmolkova lmolkova commented Jan 19, 2026

Towards #2967

exception.message is recorded by default on span-events (for now) and logs. It's stable and too useful.
At the same time, there are known cases when exception message contains things like connection strings or user_ids.

It is not recommended to include sensitive information in exception messages.

In many cases, exceptions are thrown and recorded as telemetry by different components. As a result, it may not be possible for instrumentation to prevent sensitive information from being recorded.

Additional processing in the telemetry pipeline may be necessary to remove sensitive information.

So adding sensitivity warning on the attribute. #1594 would improve this story (by making sensitivity note machine readable).

Comment thread .chloggen/exception-message-sensitive.yaml Outdated
@github-actions
Copy link
Copy Markdown

This PR contains changes to area(s) that do not have an active SIG/project and will be auto-closed:

  • exceptions

Such changes may be rejected or put on hold until a new SIG/project is established.

Please refer to the Semantic Convention Areas
document to see the current active SIGs and also to learn how to kick start a new one.

Comment thread model/exceptions/registry.yaml Outdated
@lmolkova lmolkova moved this to In progress in Logs SIG Jan 20, 2026
@lmolkova lmolkova moved this from Untriaged to Awaiting codeowners approval in Semantic Conventions Triage Jan 20, 2026
@github-project-automation github-project-automation Bot moved this from Awaiting codeowners approval to Needs More Approval in Semantic Conventions Triage Jan 20, 2026
Comment thread docs/exceptions/exceptions-logs.md Outdated
Comment thread model/exceptions/registry.yaml Outdated
@lmolkova lmolkova enabled auto-merge January 23, 2026 19:58
@lmolkova lmolkova added this pull request to the merge queue Jan 23, 2026
Merged via the queue into open-telemetry:main with commit b42364e Jan 23, 2026
18 checks passed
@lmolkova lmolkova deleted the exception-message-sensitive branch January 23, 2026 19:59
@github-project-automation github-project-automation Bot moved this from In progress to Done in Logs SIG Jan 23, 2026
@lmolkova lmolkova restored the exception-message-sensitive branch January 23, 2026 20:14
Copilot AI pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Jan 26, 2026
@LikeTheSalad LikeTheSalad mentioned this pull request Feb 16, 2026
3 tasks
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Projects

Status: Done
Archived in project

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

4 participants