Out-of-bounds Read in Bytecodealliance Wasmtime
CVE-2026-34987
Wasmtime is a runtime for WebAssembly. From 25.0.0 to before 36.0.7, 42.0.2, and 43.0.1, Wasmtime with its Winch (baseline) non-default compiler backend may allow properly constructed guest Wasm to access host memory outside of its linear-memory sandbox. This vulnerability requires use of the Winch compiler (-Ccompiler=winch). By default, Wasmtime uses its Cranelift backend, not Winch. With Winch, the same incorrect assumption is present in theory on both aarch64 and x86-64. The aarch64 case has an observed-working proof of concept, while the x86-64 case is theoretical and may not be reachable in practice. This Winch compiler bug can allow the Wasm guest to access memory before or after the linear-memory region, independently of whether pre- or post-guard regions are configured. The accessible range in the initial bug proof-of-concept is up to 32KiB before the start of memory, or ~4GiB after the start of memory, independently of the size of pre- or post-guard regions or the use of explicit or guard-region-based bounds checking. However, the underlying bug assumes a 32-bit memory offset stored in a 64-bit register has its upper bits cleared when it may not, and so closely related variants of the initial proof-of-concept may be able to access truly arbitrary memory in-process. This could result in a host process segmentation fault (DoS), an arbitrary data leak from the host process, or with a write, potentially an arbitrary RCE. This vulnerability is fixed in 36.0.7, 42.0.2, and 43.0.1.
Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow
EPSS: 0.003 (19.9th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 9.9 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H.
Affected products
- Bytecodealliance Wasmtime — versions 43.0.0, >= 43.0.0, < 44.0.1, >= 25.0.0, < 36.0.7
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- security-advisories@github.com (x_refsource_CONFIRM, Vendor Advisory)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-34987?
- CVE-2026-34987 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Bytecodealliance Wasmtime, classified under Out-of-bounds Read. CVSS score: 9.9/10. Published 2026-04-09.
- How severe is CVE-2026-34987?
- Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.9 out of 10.