GHSA-76w9-p8mg-j927

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    GHSA-76w9-p8mg-j927

    Published: 6 Jan 2022Last Modified: 10 Sept 2026

    Summary: Out-of-bounds Write in nix

    Details: On certain platforms, if a user has more than 16 groups, the nix::unistd::getgrouplist function will call the libc getgrouplist function with a length parameter greater than the size of the buffer it provides, resulting in an out-of-bounds write and memory corruption. The libc getgrouplist function takes an in/out parameter ngroups specifying the size of the group buffer. When the buffer is too small to hold all of the requested user's group memberships, some libc implementations, including glibc and Solaris libc, will modify ngroups to indicate the actual number of groups for the user, in addition to returning an error. The version of nix::unistd::getgrouplist in nix 0.16.0 and up will resize the buffer to twice its size, but will not read or modify the ngroups variable. Thus, if the user has more than twice as many groups as the initial buffer size of 8, the next call to getgrouplist will then write past the end of the buffer. The issue would require editing /etc/groups to exploit, which is usually only editable by the root user.

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: nix

    Purl: pkg:cargo/nix

    Affected ranges

    Type: SEMVER

    Events:

    Introduced- 0.16.0
    Fixed -0.20.2

    Affected versions

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High
    GHSA-76w9-p8mg-j927 | CVE-DB