CVE-2021-26951 — calamine
CRITICALCVE-2021-26951 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Out-of-bounds Write vulnerability in calamine. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for calamine — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Out of bounds write in calamine
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2021-26951 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
calamineReal-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
An issue was discovered in the calamine crate before 0.17.0 for Rust. It allows attackers to overwrite heap-memory locations because Vec::set_len is used without proper memory claiming, and this uninitialized memory is used for a user-provided Read operation, as demonstrated by Sectors::get.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | calamine | all versions | 0.17.0cargo update -p calamine --precise 0.17.0 |
Affected Products
calaminecalamine_projectResearch 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 calamine, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update calamine to 0.17.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-26951 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-2021-26951 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.