Vulnerability record · CVE-2022-23636 · published 16 February 2022
CVE-2022-23636: Bytecodealliance wasmtime vulnerability
Bytecodealliance · Wasmtime
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.
Description
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.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Affected products
1 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.
References
| Link | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/commit/886ecc562040bef61faf19438c22285c2d62403a | PatchThird Party Advisory |
| https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/security/advisories/GHSA-88xq-w8cq-xfg7 | MitigationThird Party Advisory |
| https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/commit/886ecc562040bef61faf19438c22285c2d62403a | PatchThird Party Advisory |
| https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/security/advisories/GHSA-88xq-w8cq-xfg7 | MitigationThird Party Advisory |
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2022-23636), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-27). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.
