CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-39219

Access of Resource Using Incompatible Type ('Type Confusion')

Published: Sep 17, 2021 | Modified: Nov 07, 2023
CVSS 3.x
6.3
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
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. Wasmtime before version 0.30.0 is affected by a type confusion vulnerability. As a Rust library the wasmtime crate clearly marks which functions are safe and which are unsafe, guaranteeing that if consumers never use unsafe then it should not be possible to have memory unsafety issues in their embeddings of Wasmtime. An issue was discovered in the safe API of Linker::func_* APIs. These APIs were previously not sound when one Engine was used to create the Linker and then a different Engine was used to create a Store and then the Linker was used to instantiate a module into that Store. Cross-Engine usage of functions is not supported in Wasmtime and this can result in type confusion of function pointers, resulting in being able to safely call a function with the wrong type. Triggering this bug requires using at least two Engine values in an embedding and then additionally using two different values with a Linker (one at the creation time of the Linker and another when instantiating a module with the Linker). Its expected that usage of more-than-one Engine in an embedding is relatively rare since an Engine is intended to be a globally shared resource, so the expectation is that the impact of this issue is relatively small. The fix implemented is to change this behavior to panic!() in Rust instead of silently allowing it. Using different Engine instances with a Linker is a programmer bug that wasmtime catches at runtime. This bug has been patched and users should upgrade to Wasmtime version 0.30.0. If you cannot upgrade Wasmtime and are using more than one Engine in your embedding its recommended to instead use only one Engine for the entire program if possible. An Engine is designed to be a globally shared resource that is suitable to have only one for the lifetime of an entire process. If using multiple Engines is required then code should be audited to ensure that Linker is only used with one Engine.

Weakness

The product allocates or initializes a resource such as a pointer, object, or variable using one type, but it later accesses that resource using a type that is incompatible with the original type.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Wasmtime Bytecodealliance * 0.30.0 (excluding)

Extended Description

When the product accesses the resource using an incompatible type, this could trigger logical errors because the resource does not have expected properties. In languages without memory safety, such as C and C++, type confusion can lead to out-of-bounds memory access. While this weakness is frequently associated with unions when parsing data with many different embedded object types in C, it can be present in any application that can interpret the same variable or memory location in multiple ways. This weakness is not unique to C and C++. For example, errors in PHP applications can be triggered by providing array parameters when scalars are expected, or vice versa. Languages such as Perl, which perform automatic conversion of a variable of one type when it is accessed as if it were another type, can also contain these issues.

References