CVE-2020-35916 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in image. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for image — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Mutable reference with immutable provenance in image
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-35916 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 385,738 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
imageReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
A mutable reference to a struct was constructed by dereferencing a pointer obtained from slice::as_ptr. Instead, slice::as_mut_ptr should have been called on the mutable slice argument. The former performs an implicit reborrow as an immutable shared reference which does not allow writing through the derived pointer.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | image | all versions | 0.23.12cargo update -p image --precise 0.23.12 |
Affected Products
imageimage-rsResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for image, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update image to 0.23.12 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-35916 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-35916 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.