CVE-2023-28448 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.7) Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability in versionize. A fix is available for versionize — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Versionize is lacking bound checks, potentially leading to out of bounds memory access
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-28448.
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.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-28448 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 376,715 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
versionizeReal-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
Versionize is a framework for version tolerant serializion/deserialization of Rust data structures, designed for usecases that need fast deserialization times and minimal size overhead. An issue was discovered in the ‘Versionize::deserialize’ implementation provided by the ‘versionize’ crate for ‘vmm_sys_utils::fam::FamStructWrapper', which can lead to out of bounds memory accesses. The impact started with version 0.1.1. The issue was corrected in version 0.1.10 by inserting a check that verifies, for any deserialized header, the lengths of compared flexible arrays are equal and aborting deserialization otherwise.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | versionize | ≥ 0.1.1&&< 0.1.10 | 0.1.10cargo update -p versionize --precise 0.1.10 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for versionize, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update versionize to 0.1.10 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-28448 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 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2023-28448 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-28448. 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-2023-28448 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-28448 across crates.io dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.