CVE-2019-16137: Spin Wrong Memory Orderings Violates Mutual Vulnerability

HIGH
Advisory Identifier: GHSA-hv7x-f3pv-gpwr
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CVSS 7.5
CWE-662
Published
Advisory Summary

CVE-2019-16137 is a HIGH (CVSS 7.5) wrong memory orderings violates mutual vulnerability (CWE-662: Improper Synchronization) affecting Spin libraries in the crates.io ecosystem. The issue involves wrong memory orderings violates mutual exclusion in spin. Remediation is available by upgrading affected packages to version 0.5.2.

CVE-2019-16137 at a Glance

CVE Identifier CVE-2019-16137
GHSA Identifier GHSA-hv7x-f3pv-gpwr
Severity HIGH
CVSS v3.1 Base Score 7.5
CWE Classification CWE-662: Improper Synchronization
Affected Product Spin
Package Ecosystem crates.io
Published Date
Last Updated

Security Impact

CVSS: 7.5

The security impact metrics below are parsed directly from the CVSS v3.1 vector string (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

Attack Vector Network (AV:N)
Attack Complexity Low (AC:L)
Privileges Required None (PR:N)
User Interaction None (UI:N)
Scope Unchanged (S:U)
Confidentiality None (C:N)
Integrity None (I:N)
Availability High (A:H)

How to Fix CVE-2019-16137

To remediate this vulnerability, upgrade all affected Spin dependencies to a patched release. Both direct and transitive dependencies should be checked, as frameworks or security libraries may pull in vulnerable versions transitively.

spin fixed: 0.5.2 
Upgrade spin to 0.5.2
Verify Direct and Transitive Dependencies

Run the following command in your project directory to verify that all resolved dependencies use the patched release: 

inspect dependencies for spin

How to Check if You Are Affected

To determine whether your application is affected by CVE-2019-16137, inspect your project dependencies for Spin:

inspect dependencies for spin

Analyze the terminal output to locate any version of Spin in your dependency tree. If any resolved version matches the vulnerable ranges listed in the table below (for example, versions earlier than 0.5.2), your application is affected.

Note: Verify declared build manifests and deployed runtime container environments.

Technical Details

Vulnerability Mechanism & Technical Analysis

This vulnerability is classified under CWE-662: Improper Synchronization, where the product utilizes multiple threads, processes, components, or systems to allow temporary access to a shared resource that can only be exclusive to one process at a time, but it does not properly synchronize these actions, which might cause simultaneous accesses of this resource by multiple threads or processes. In Spin, software state validation or input boundaries are circumvented during processing. Review the official source advisory statement below for specific affected components, classes, and reproduction details.

Source Advisory Statement

Wrong memory orderings inside the RwLock implementation allow for two writers to acquire the lock at the same time. The drop implementation used Ordering::Relaxed, which allows the compiler or CPU to reorder a mutable access on the locked data after the lock has been yielded. Only users of the RwLock implementation are affected. Users of Once (including users of lazy_static with the spin_no_std feature enabled) are NOT affected. On strongly ordered CPU architectures like x86, the only real way that this would lead to a memory corruption is if the compiler reorders an access after the lock is yielded, which is possible but in practice unlikely. It is a more serious issue on weakly ordered architectures such as ARM which, except in the presence of certain instructions, allow the hardware to decide which accesses are seen at what times. Therefore on an ARM system it is likely that using the wrong memory ordering would result in a memory corruption, even if the compiler itself doesn't reorder the memory accesses in a buggy way.

CVE-2019-16137 Affected Spin Versions

1 component(s)
Fixed Versions:
0.5.2
Product / Package Ecosystem Affected Versions Fixed Version
spin
 crates.io
< 0.5.2
0.5.2

References

NVD — CVE-2019-16137 NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-16137
Spin Source Repository REPOSITORY
https://github.com/mvdnes/spin-rs/issues/65
Spin Source Repository REPOSITORY
https://github.com/mvdnes/spin-rs/pull/66
Spin Source Repository REPOSITORY
https://github.com/mvdnes/spin-rs
rustsec.org/advisories/rustsec-... WEB
https://rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2019-0013.html

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2019-16137?
CVE-2019-16137 is a security vulnerability in Spin involving Wrong memory orderings violates mutual exclusion in spin under CWE-662: Improper Synchronization.
Which Spin versions are affected?
Affected versions include releases prior to 0.5.2 across affected packages: spin.
What version fixes CVE-2019-16137?
Upgrading to 0.5.2 (or the latest patched release for your respective branch) resolves the vulnerability.
Is spin affected?
Yes, spin is affected in releases prior to 0.5.2. Upgrade your dependency to 0.5.2 or later.
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2019-16137?
CVE-2019-16137 has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (HIGH) with vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.
What CWE is associated with CVE-2019-16137?
CVE-2019-16137 is classified under CWE-662: Improper Synchronization (The product utilizes multiple threads, processes, components, or systems to allow temporary access to a shared resource that can only be exclusive to one process at a time, but it does not properly synchronize these actions, which might cause simultaneous accesses of this resource by multiple threads or processes.).
How can I check crates.io dependencies for CVE-2019-16137?
Run the dependency tree command: 'inspect dependencies for spin'. This command lists direct and transitive dependencies in your build configuration so you can verify if a vulnerable version is resolved.
Machine-readable OSV JSON OSV v1.5 Schema
Normalized schema output
View Raw JSON 
{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-hv7x-f3pv-gpwr",
  "modified" : "2023-06-13T20:55:22Z",
  "published" : "2021-08-25T20:44:46Z",
  "aliases" : [ "CVE-2019-16137" ],
  "summary" : "Wrong memory orderings violates mutual exclusion in spin",
  "details" : "Wrong memory orderings inside the RwLock implementation allow for two writers to acquire the lock at the same time. The drop implementation used Ordering::Relaxed, which allows the compiler or CPU to reorder a mutable access on the locked data after the lock has been yielded.\n\nOnly users of the RwLock implementation are affected. Users of Once (including users of lazy_static with the spin_no_std feature enabled) are NOT affected.\n\nOn strongly ordered CPU architectures like x86, the only real way that this would lead to a memory corruption is if the compiler reorders an access after the lock is yielded, which is possible but in practice unlikely. It is a more serious issue on weakly ordered architectures such as ARM which, except in the presence of certain instructions, allow the hardware to decide which accesses are seen at what times. Therefore on an ARM system it is likely that using the wrong memory ordering would result in a memory corruption, even if the compiler itself doesn't reorder the memory accesses in a buggy way.",
  "severity" : [ {
    "type" : "CVSS_V3",
    "score" : "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H"
  } ],
  "affected" : [ {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "crates.io",
      "name" : "spin"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "0.5.2"
      } ]
    } ]
  } ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "ADVISORY",
    "url" : "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-16137"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mvdnes/spin-rs/issues/65"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mvdnes/spin-rs/pull/66"
  }, {
    "type" : "PACKAGE",
    "url" : "https://github.com/mvdnes/spin-rs"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2019-0013.html"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-662" ],
    "severity" : "HIGH",
    "github_reviewed" : true,
    "github_reviewed_at" : "2021-08-19T21:22:40Z",
    "nvd_published_at" : null
  }
}