How severe is GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq?

GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq has a CVSS score of 8.2/10, rated HIGH. Immediate patching is strongly recommended.

Which packages are affected by GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq?

GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq affects the following packages: whoami (crates.io). Ecosystems affected: crates.io.

How do I fix GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq?

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.

How do I detect GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq in my crates.io dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for whoami. 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.

How do I mitigate GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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 does O3 Security protect against GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq?

O3 pinpoints whether GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Is GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

When was GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq published, and has it been updated?

GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq was published on April 5, 2024 and was last updated on April 11, 2024. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

🦀 crates.io

GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq

HIGH

whoami stack buffer overflow on several Unix platforms

Also known asRUSTSEC-2024-0020

Published

Apr 5, 2024

Updated

Apr 11, 2024

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

1 / 1

Exploits

None indexed

Blast Radius

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

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
🦀crates.io	`whoami`	≥ 0.5.3&&< 1.5.0	1.5.0

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for whoami. 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 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.
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 GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq 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 GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

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

Is GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq in your dependencies?

O3 detects GHSA-w5w5-8vfh-xcjq 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.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works