CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-39216

Use After Free

Published: Sep 17, 2021 | Modified: Nov 21, 2024
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
3.3 LOW
AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Wasmtime is an open source runtime for WebAssembly & WASI. In Wasmtime from version 0.19.0 and before version 0.30.0 there was a use-after-free bug when passing externrefs from the host to guest Wasm content. To trigger the bug, you have to explicitly pass multiple externrefs from the host to a Wasm instance at the same time, either by passing multiple externrefs as arguments from host code to a Wasm function, or returning multiple externrefs to Wasm from a multi-value return function defined in the host. If you do not have host code that matches one of these shapes, then you are not impacted. If Wasmtimes VMExternRefActivationsTable became filled to capacity after passing the first externref in, then passing in the second externref could trigger a garbage collection. However the first externref is not rooted until we pass control to Wasm, and therefore could be reclaimed by the collector if nothing else was holding a reference to it or otherwise keeping it alive. Then, when control was passed to Wasm after the garbage collection, Wasm could use the first externref, which at this point has already been freed. We have reason to believe that the effective impact of this bug is relatively small because usage of externref is currently quite rare. The bug has been fixed, and users should upgrade to Wasmtime 0.30.0. If you cannot upgrade Wasmtime yet, you can avoid the bug by disabling reference types support in Wasmtime by passing false to wasmtime::Config::wasm_reference_types.

Weakness

The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory “belongs” to the code that operates on the new pointer.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Wasmtime Bytecodealliance 0.19.0 (including) 0.30.0 (excluding)

Potential Mitigations

References