Rust advisories / abomonation
Unsound HighRUSTSEC-2021-0120 · abomonation
RUSTSEC-2021-0120: abomonation transmutes &T to and from &[u8] without sufficient constraints
Short answerabomonation has an API that can cause undefined behaviour from safe code: abomonation transmutes &T to and from &[u8] without sufficient constraints. No fixed version yet.
| Crate | abomonation |
|---|---|
| Type | Unsound |
| Affected versions | Every version. |
| Fixed in | none |
| Severity | High (GitHub rating) |
| Published | 2021-10-17 |
| Last changed | 2023-11-08 |
| Also known as | CVE-2021-45708, GHSA-5vwc-r48g-wj6c, GHSA-hfxp-p695-629x |
What to do
- Find who pulls it in:
cargo tree -i abomonation. - Avoid the affected API, or replace the crate.
Details from the advisory
This transmute is at the core of the abomonation crates. It's so easy to use it to violate alignment requirements that no test in the crate's test suite passes under miri. The use of this transmute in serialization/deserialization also incorrectly assumes that the layout of a repr(Rust) type is stable. This transmute can also disclose both the contents of padding bytes which may be an information leak and the contents of pointers, which may be used to defeat ASLR.
References
- Package: crates.io/crates/abomonation
- Advisory: rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2021-0120.html
- Report: github.com/TimelyDataflow/abomonation/issues/23
From the RustSec Advisory Database (CC0-1.0) via the OSV export, downloaded Oct 24, 2026. Severity score computed from the published CVSS vector.
Up next
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