CVE-2021-39228
CRITICALMemory Safety Issue when using patch or merge on state and assign the result back to state
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
Blast Radius
tremor-scriptReal-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
Tremor is an event processing system for unstructured data. A vulnerability exists between versions 0.7.2 and 0.11.6. This vulnerability is a memory safety Issue when using patch or merge on state and assign the result back to state. In this case, affected versions of Tremor and the tremor-script crate maintains references to memory that might have been freed already. And these memory regions can be accessed by retrieving the state, e.g. send it over TCP or HTTP. This requires the Tremor server (or any other program using tremor-script) to execute a tremor-script script that uses the mentioned language construct. The issue has been patched in version 0.11.6 by removing the optimization and always cloning the target expression of a Merge or Patch. If an upgrade is not possible, a possible workaround is to avoid the optimization by introducing a temporary variable and not immediately reassigning to state.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | tremor-script | ≥ 0.7.3&&< 0.11.6 | 0.11.6 |
Research 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 tremor-script. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update tremor-script to 0.11.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-39228 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2021-39228 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2021-39228. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-39228 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2021-39228 across crates.io dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.