GitHub Advisoryadvisory · crates.io

GHSA-wrw7-89jp-8q8g Unsoundness in `Iterator` and `DoubleEndedIterator` impls for `glib::VariantStrIter`

MEDIUM Published 2024-12-23 Modified 2024-12-23 Official page ↗
Ecosystem
crates.io
Packages
glib
Severity
Moderate
CVSS vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Reviewed
2024-12-23

Affected packages

• crates.io glib: >= 0.15.0, < 0.20.0 → fixed in 0.20.0

Description

The `VariantStrIter::impl_get` function (called internally by implementations of the `Iterator` and `DoubleEndedIterator` traits for this type) was unsound, resulting in undefined behaviour. An immutable reference `&p` to a `*mut libc::c_char` pointer initialized to `NULL` was passed as an argument to a C function that that mutates the pointer behind `&p` in-place (i.e. as an out-argument), which was unsound. After changes in recent versions of the Rust compiler, these unsound writes through `&p` now seem to be completely disregarded when building the `glib` crate with optimizations. This subsequently caused all calls of `VariantStrIter::impl_get` to violate the safety requirements of the `std::ffi::CStr::from_ptr` function - which requires its argument to be a valid pointer to a C-style string - resulting in crashes due to `NULL` pointer dereferences. This was fixed by passing the out-argument pointer explitly as `&mut p` instead of `&p`. This issue has been present since this code was initially added in `glib` v0.15.0. The mismatch in mutability was likely missed (and not raised as an error by the compiler) because the C function wrapped by `VariantStrIter::impl_get` is variadic (`glib_sys::g_variant_get_child`), and the pointer in question is one of the variadic arguments.

References