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HIGH severity

whoami stack buffer overflow on several Unix platformsGHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq

HIGHFix: ardaku/whoami@d6ee13e

GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq is a high-severity (CVSS 8.2) remote code execution vulnerability in whoami. A fix is available for whoami — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Also known asRUSTSEC-2024-0020
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Apr 11, 2024 · OSV.dev, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
🦀whoami

Real-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

With versions of the whoami crate >= 0.5.3 and < 1.5.0, calling any of these functions leads to an immediate stack buffer overflow on illumos and Solaris:

  • whoami::username
  • whoami::realname
  • whoami::username_os
  • whoami::realname_os

With versions of the whoami crate >= 0.5.3 and < 1.0.1, calling any of the above functions also leads to a stack buffer overflow on these platforms:

  • Bitrig
  • DragonFlyBSD
  • FreeBSD
  • NetBSD
  • OpenBSD

This occurs because of an incorrect definition of the passwd struct on those platforms.

As a result of this issue, denial of service and data corruption have both been observed in the wild. The issue is possibly exploitable as well.

This vulnerability also affects other Unix platforms that aren't Linux or macOS.

This issue has been addressed in whoami 1.5.0.

For more information, see this GitHub issue.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🦀crates.iowhoami≥ 0.5.3&&< 1.5.01.5.0cargo update -p whoami --precise 1.5.0

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for whoami, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update whoami to 1.5.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. 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

With versions of the whoami crate >= 0.5.3 and < 1.5.0, calling any of these functions leads to an immediate stack buffer overflow on illumos and Solaris: - `whoami::username` - `whoami::realname` - `whoami::username_os` - `whoami::realname_os` With versions of the whoami crate >= 0.5.3 and < 1.0.1, calling any of the above functions also leads to a stack buffer overflow on these platforms: - Bitrig - DragonFlyBSD - FreeBSD - NetBSD - OpenBSD This occurs because of an incorrect definition of the `passwd` struct on those platforms. As a result of this issue, denial of service and data corr
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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whoami stack buffer overflow on several Unix platforms