CVE-2022-23636

low-risk
Published 2022-02-16

Wasmtime is an open source runtime for WebAssembly & WASI. Prior to versions 0.34.1 and 0.33.1, there exists a bug in the pooling instance allocator in Wasmtime's runtime where a failure to instantiate an instance for a module that defines an `externref` global will result in an invalid drop of a `VMExternRef` via an uninitialized pointer. A number of conditions listed in the GitHub Security Advisory must be true in order for an instance to be vulnerable to this issue. Maintainers believe that the effective impact of this bug is relatively small because the usage of `externref` is still uncommon and without a resource limiter configured on the `Store`, which is not the default configuration, it is only possible to trigger the bug from an error returned by `mprotect` or `VirtualAlloc`. Note that on Linux with the `uffd` feature enabled, it is only possible to trigger the bug from a resource limiter as the call to `mprotect` is skipped. The bug has been fixed in 0.34.1 and 0.33.1 and users are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible. If it is not possible to upgrade to version 0.34.1 or 0.33.1 of the `wasmtime` crate, it is recommend that support for the reference types proposal be disabled by passing `false` to `Config::wasm_reference_types`. Doing so will prevent modules that use `externref` from being loaded entirely.

Do I need to act?

-
0.18% chance of exploitation
EPSS score — low exploit probability
-
Not on CISA KEV list
No confirmed active exploitation reported to CISA
?
Patch status unknown
Check vendor advisories for fix availability and mitigation guidance
5
CVSS 5.1/10 Medium
LOCAL / HIGH complexity

Affected Products (2)

Affected Vendors

21
/ 100
low-risk
Severity 13/34 · Low
Exploitability 1/34 · Minimal
Exposure 7/34 · Low