owasp-amass/amass · error

address is not a valid UTF-8 string

Error message

address is not a valid UTF-8 string

What it means

ParseAddressOptions rejects the input because utf8.ValidString(address) is false: the address contains invalid UTF-8 byte sequences. The value must be passed to the C libpostal API as a C string, so non-UTF-8 input cannot be processed safely and the function bails out before acquiring the postal lock.

Source

Thrown at internal/libpostal/cgo_specific.go:54

func getDefaultParserOptions() ParserOptions {
	return ParserOptions{
		Language: "",
		Country:  "",
	}
}

func ParseAddress(ctx context.Context, address string) ([]ParsedComponent, error) {
	return ParseAddressOptions(ctx, address, parserDefaultOptions)
}

func ParseAddressOptions(ctx context.Context, address string, options ParserOptions) ([]ParsedComponent, error) {
	if !postalLibAvailable {
		return nil, errors.New(ErrPostalLibNotAvailable)
	}

	if !utf8.ValidString(address) {
		return nil, errors.New("address is not a valid UTF-8 string")
	}

	postalLock.Lock()
	defer postalLock.Unlock()

	cAddress := C.CString(address)
	defer C.free(unsafe.Pointer(cAddress))

	cOptions := C.libpostal_get_address_parser_default_options()
	if options.Language != "" {
		cLanguage := C.CString(options.Language)
		defer C.free(unsafe.Pointer(cLanguage))

		cOptions.language = cLanguage
	}

	if options.Country != "" {
		cCountry := C.CString(options.Country)

View on GitHub (pinned to 79299dce87)

Solutions

1. Sanitize or re-encode the input (e.g. strings.ToValidUTF8 with a replacement rune) before calling ParseAddress
2. Fix the upstream data source that produced the malformed bytes (file encoding, HTTP body decoding)
3. Reject the record early at ingestion with a clearer error that identifies the offending input

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at internal/libpostal/cgo_specific.go:54 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of owasp-amass/amass@79299dce87 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/acb2e23ca7742cea. Report an issue: GitHub.