Wasmtime with Winch compiler backend on aarch64 may allow a sandbox-escaping memory access (bytecodealliance wasmtime)

CVE-2026-34987
CRITICAL 9.0

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.28 % · percentile 20 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
GitHub_M
NVD status
Analyzed

Description

Wasmtime is a runtime for WebAssembly. From 25.0.0 to before 36.0.7, 42.0.2, and 43.0.1, Wasmtime with its Winch (baseline) non-default compiler backend may allow properly constructed guest Wasm to access host memory outside of its linear-memory sandbox. This vulnerability requires use of the Winch compiler (-Ccompiler=winch). By default, Wasmtime uses its Cranelift backend, not Winch. With Winch, the same incorrect assumption is present in theory on both aarch64 and x86-64. The aarch64 case has an observed-working proof of concept, while the x86-64 case is theoretical and may not be reachable in practice. This Winch compiler bug can allow the Wasm guest to access memory before or after the linear-memory region, independently of whether pre- or post-guard regions are configured. The accessible range in the initial bug proof-of-concept is up to 32KiB before the start of memory, or ~4GiB after the start of memory, independently of the size of pre- or post-guard regions or the use of explicit or guard-region-based bounds checking. However, the underlying bug assumes a 32-bit memory offset stored in a 64-bit register has its upper bits cleared when it may not, and so closely related variants of the initial proof-of-concept may be able to access truly arbitrary memory in-process. This could result in a host process segmentation fault (DoS), an arbitrary data leak from the host process, or with a write, potentially an arbitrary RCE. This vulnerability is fixed in 36.0.7, 42.0.2, and 43.0.1.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-125 — Out-of-bounds Read
  • CWE-787 — Out-of-bounds Write

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 4.0CRITICAL 9.0CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:HGitHub_M
CVSS 4.0CRITICAL 9.0CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XNVD · security-advisories@github.com (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.9CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:HNVD · nvd@nist.gov (Primary)

European references

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
bytecodealliance · wasmtimeaffected >= 25.0.0, < 36.0.7 ; affected >= 37.0.0, < 42.0.2 ; affected >= 43.0.0, < 44.0.1

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD