CVE-2026-35186 — wasmtime
CVE-2026-35186 is a CWE-789 vulnerability in wasmtime. A fix is available for wasmtime — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Wasmtime has an improperly masked return value from `table.grow` with Winch compiler backend
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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-2026-35186.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
Real-World Exposure
wasmtime🦀wasmtime🦀wasmtimeReal-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
Impact
Wasmtime's Winch compiler backend contains a bug where translating the table.grow operator causes the result to be incorrectly typed. For 32-bit tables this means that the result of the operator, internally in Winch, is tagged as a 64-bit value instead of a 32-bit value. This invalid internal representation of Winch's compiler state compounds into further issues depending on how the value is consumed.
One example can be seen when the result of table.grow is used as the address of a load operation. The load operation is tricked into thinking the address is a 64-bit value, not a 32-bit value, which means that the final address to load from is calculated incorrectly. This can lead to a situation where the bytes before the start of linear memory can be loaded/stored to.
The primary consequence of this bug is that bytes in the host's address space can be stored/read from. This is only applicable to the 16 bytes before linear memory, however, as the only significant return value of table.grow that can be misinterpreted is -1. The bytes before linear memory are, by default, unmapped memory. Wasmtime will detect this fault and abort the process, however, because wasm should not be able to access these bytes.
Overall this this bug in Winch represents a DoS vector by crashing the host process, a correctness issue within Winch, and a possible leak of up to 16-bytes before linear memory. Wasmtime's default compiler is Cranelift, not Winch, and Wasmtime's default settings are to place guard pages before linear memory. This means that Wasmtime's default configuration is not affected by this issue, and when explicitly choosing Winch Wasmtime's otherwise default configuration leads to a DoS. Disabling guard pages before linear memory is required to possibly leak up to 16-bytes of host data.
Patches
Wasmtime 43.0.1, 42.0.2, and 36.0.7 have been released with fixes for this issue.
Workaround
There are no workarounds within the Winch compiler backend while using the affected versions. Users of Wasmtime are encouraged either to upgrade to patched versions or, if that is not possible, use the Cranelift compiler backend.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | wasmtime | ≥ 25.0.0&&< 36.0.7 | 36.0.7cargo update -p wasmtime --precise 36.0.7 |
| 🦀crates.io | wasmtime | ≥ 37.0.0&&< 42.0.2 | 42.0.2cargo update -p wasmtime --precise 42.0.2 |
| 🦀crates.io | wasmtime | ≥ 43.0.0&&< 43.0.1 | 43.0.1cargo update -p wasmtime --precise 43.0.1 |
Affected Products
wasmtimebytecodeallianceDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for wasmtime, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update wasmtime to 36.0.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-35186 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-35186 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-35186 in your dependencies?
Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.