CVE-2020-36441 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.1) CWE-362 vulnerability in abox. A fix is available for abox — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Data race in abox
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-36441 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 385,386 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
aboxReal-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
Affected versions of this crate implements Send/Sync for AtomicBox<T> without requiring T: Send/T: Sync. This allows to create data races to T: !Sync and send T: !Send to another thread. Such behavior breaks the compile-time thread safety guarantees of Rust, and allows users to incur undefined behavior using safe Rust (e.g. memory corruption from data race). The flaw was corrected in commit 34c2b9e by adding trait bound T: Send to Send impl for AtomicBox<T> and trait bound T: Sync to Sync impl for AtomicBox<T>.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | abox | all versions | 0.4.1cargo update -p abox --precise 0.4.1 |
Affected Products
aboxabox_projectDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for abox, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update abox to 0.4.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-36441 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-36441 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.