CVE-2023-53156 is a medium-severity (CVSS 4.5) CWE-190 vulnerability in transpose. A fix is available for transpose — see the affected versions and patch details below.
transpose: Buffer overflow due to integer overflow
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-2023-53156.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
transposeReal-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
Given the function transpose::transpose:
fn transpose<T: Copy>(input: &[T], output: &mut [T], input_width: usize, input_height: usize)
The safety check input_width * input_height == output.len() can fail due to input_width * input_height overflowing in such a way that it equals output.len().
As a result of failing the safety check, memory past the end of output is written to. This only occurs in release mode since * panics on overflow in debug mode.
Exploiting this issue requires the caller to pass input_width and input_height arguments such that multiplying them overflows, and the overflown result equals the lengths of input and output slices.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | transpose | ≥ 0.1.0&&< 0.2.3 | 0.2.3cargo update -p transpose --precise 0.2.3 |
Affected Products
transposeejmahlerDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for transpose, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update transpose to 0.2.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-53156 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-2023-53156 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.