RUSTSEC-2026-0293: Double free / use-after-free in `Consumer::skip` and `Consumer::clear` when an element's `Drop` panics

What to do

1. See which version you have: cargo tree -i ringbuf (it also shows which of your dependencies pulls it in).
2. Update within your version requirement: cargo update -p ringbuf. If the fix is a newer major or minor than your requirement allows, raise it in Cargo.toml (for example ringbuf = "0.5.2") or update the dependency that pulls it in.
3. Check again with cargo audit, or paste your Cargo.lock into our Cargo.toml checker.

Details from the advisory

Consumer::skip() and Consumer::clear() are not panic-safe. They drop the consumed elements in place and only afterwards call advance_read_index() to move the ring buffer's read index past them. If an element's Drop panics mid-loop, advance_read_index() is never reached, so the read index still points at the already-dropped elements. When the ring buffer is later dropped, its destructor re-visits those slots and drops the same elements a second time , a double free (CWE-415) / use-after-free (CWE-416) reachable from safe Rust, confirmed under AddressSanitizer.

Consumer::clear() delegates to Consumer::skip(self.len()), so both share the same root cause and the same fix.

Mitigation

Update to 0.5.2 or later (fixed in agerasev/ringbuf#60).

References

• Package: crates.io/crates/ringbuf
• Advisory: rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2026-0293.html
• Web: github.com/agerasev/ringbuf/pull/60

From the RustSec Advisory Database (CC0-1.0) via the OSV export, downloaded Oct 24, 2026. Severity score computed from the published CVSS vector.