CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-41051 — Vm-Memory Project Vm-Memory security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 4.7

In a typical Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) there are several components, such as boot loader, virtual device drivers, virtio backend drivers and vhost drivers, that need to access the VM physical memory. The vm-memory rust crate provides a set of traits to decouple VM memory consumers from VM memory providers. An issue was discovered in the default implementations of the `VolatileMemory::{get_atomic_ref, aligned_as_ref, aligned_as_mut, get_ref, get_array_ref}` trait functions, which allows out-of-bounds memory access if the `VolatileMemory::get_slice` function returns a `VolatileSlice` whose length is less than the function’s `count` argument. No implementations of `get_slice` provided in `vm_memory` are affected. Users of custom `VolatileMemory` implementations may be impacted if the custom implementation does not adhere to `get_slice`'s documentation. The issue started in version 0.1.0 but was fixed in version 0.12.2 by inserting a check that verifies that the `VolatileSlice` returned by `get_slice` is of the correct length. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
4.7 (3.1)
Published
2023-09-01
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-125

Affected products

  • vm-memory_project / vm-memory

Matched remediation archetype

Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
  • Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
  • Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
  • Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
  • Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.