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Fencer Intel
medium 5.3

RUSTSEC-2026-0432 json

`codeq`: decoding untrusted input can allocate memory from an unchecked length prefix (denial of service)

published 9d ago modified 7d ago

cvss
5.3
version 3.1, OSV
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
—
no score, EPSS covers CVEs only
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

`codeq` is a serialization library whose `Decode` trait reads length-prefixed values. For `String` and `Vec<u8>`, the length-prefixed `Decode` implementations read a 4-byte big-endian length and allocate a buffer of that size **before** reading the payload. Because the declared length is taken straight from the input with no upper bound and no cross-check against the bytes actually available, a tiny input can force an allocation of up to ~4 GiB. Code that decodes untrusted data through `codeq` can therefore be made to spike memory use and be OOM-killed (CWE-400, uncontrolled resource consumption).

The affected path, in `src/codec/impls/string_impl.rs`:

```rust impl Decode for String { fn decode<R: io::Read>(mut r: R) -> Result<Self, io::Error> { let len = r.read_u32::<BigEndian>()? as usize; let mut buf = vec![0; len]; // allocates `len` bytes up front r.read_exact(&mut buf)?; String::from_utf8(buf).map_err(|e| io::Error::new(io::ErrorKind::InvalidData, e)) } } ```

Any code that decodes attacker-controlled bytes through `codeq` can be forcedcto allocate up to ~4 GiB per `decode` call from a 4-byte length prefix. On a service decoding untrusted input this is a cheap denial of service (crash / OOM-kill). The practical severity depends on how the embedding wires `codeq` to untrusted bytes.

## Remediation

Fixed in `0.6.3`, which grows the decode buffers as payload bytes actually arrive instead of pre-allocating the full declared length (commit `9f15313`, "fix: codec: grow decode buffers as payload bytes arrive"). Upgrade to `codeq >= 0.6.3`.

Patch / fix

  • crates.io codeq 0.6.3

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CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
OSV 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
crates.io codeq
>=0.0.0-0, <0.6.3
0.6.3

References

Sources

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