CVE-2019-16137
Wrong memory orderings violates mutual exclusion in spin
An issue was discovered in the spin crate before 0.5.2 for Rust, when RwLock is used. Because memory ordering is mishandled, two writers can acquire the lock at the same time, violating mutual exclusion.
Attack profile
How easy it is to exploit
- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges needed
- None
- User interaction
- None
What an attacker can affect
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
Exploit likelihood
What each source reports
NVD Score used
7.5
An issue was discovered in the spin crate before 0.5.2 for Rust, when RwLock is used. Because memory ordering is mishandled, two writers can acquire the lock at the same time, violating mutual exclusion.
- Record
CVE-2019-16137- CVSS 3.1
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - CVSS 2.0
- 7.8 High
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C - Weakness
- CWE-662
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
CVE List No score
An issue was discovered in the spin crate before 0.5.2 for Rust, when RwLock is used. Because memory ordering is mishandled, two writers can acquire the lock at the same time, violating mutual exclusion.
- Record
CVE-2019-16137- Updated
- 2026-11-02
EUVDEUVD-2021-1759 No score
An issue was discovered in the spin crate before 0.5.2 for Rust, when RwLock is used. Because memory ordering is mishandled, two writers can acquire the lock at the same time, violating mutual exclusion.
- Record
EUVD-2021-1759- Updated
- 2026-11-03
GitHub AdvisoriesGHSA-hv7x-f3pv-gpwr
7.5
Wrong memory orderings violates mutual exclusion in spin
Wrong memory orderings inside the RwLock implementation allow for two writers to acquire the lock at the same time. The drop implementation used Ordering::Relaxed, which allows the compiler or CPU to reorder a mutable access on the locked data after the lock has been yielded.
Only users of the RwLock implementation are affected. Users of Once (including users of lazy_static with the spin_no_std feature enabled) are NOT affected.
On strongly ordered CPU architectures like x86, the only real way that this would lead to a memory corruption is if the compiler reorders an access after the lock is yielded, which is possible but in practice unlikely. It is a more serious issue on weakly ordered architectures such as ARM which, except in the presence of certain instructions, allow the hardware to decide which accesses are seen at what times. Therefore on an ARM system it is likely that using the wrong memory ordering would result in a memory corruption, even if the compiler itself doesn't reorder the memory accesses in a buggy way.
- Record
GHSA-hv7x-f3pv-gpwr- CVSS 3.1
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-662
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSV
7.5
An issue was discovered in the spin crate before 0.5.2 for Rust, when RwLock is used. Because memory ordering is mishandled, two writers can acquire the lock at the same time, violating mutual exclusion.
- Record
CVE-2019-16137- CVSS 3.1
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSVDEBIAN-CVE-2019-16137
7.5
An issue was discovered in the spin crate before 0.5.2 for Rust, when RwLock is used. Because memory ordering is mishandled, two writers can acquire the lock at the same time, violating mutual exclusion.
- Record
DEBIAN-CVE-2019-16137- CVSS 3.1
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSVGHSA-hv7x-f3pv-gpwr
7.5
Wrong memory orderings violates mutual exclusion in spin
Wrong memory orderings inside the RwLock implementation allow for two writers to acquire the lock at the same time. The drop implementation used Ordering::Relaxed, which allows the compiler or CPU to reorder a mutable access on the locked data after the lock has been yielded.
Only users of the RwLock implementation are affected. Users of Once (including users of lazy_static with the spin_no_std feature enabled) are NOT affected.
On strongly ordered CPU architectures like x86, the only real way that this would lead to a memory corruption is if the compiler reorders an access after the lock is yielded, which is possible but in practice unlikely. It is a more serious issue on weakly ordered architectures such as ARM which, except in the presence of certain instructions, allow the hardware to decide which accesses are seen at what times. Therefore on an ARM system it is likely that using the wrong memory ordering would result in a memory corruption, even if the compiler itself doesn't reorder the memory accesses in a buggy way.
- Record
GHSA-hv7x-f3pv-gpwr- CVSS 3.1
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-662
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSVRUSTSEC-2019-0013
7.5
Wrong memory orderings in RwLock potentially violates mutual exclusion
Wrong memory orderings inside the RwLock implementation allow for two writers to acquire the lock at the same time. The drop implementation used Ordering::Relaxed, which allows the compiler or CPU to reorder a mutable access on the locked data after the lock has been yielded.
Only users of the RwLock implementation are affected. Users of Once (including users of lazy_static with the spin_no_std feature enabled) are NOT affected.
On strongly ordered CPU architectures like x86, the only real way that this would lead to a memory corruption is if the compiler reorders an access after the lock is yielded, which is possible but in practice unlikely. It is a more serious issue on weakly ordered architectures such as ARM which, except in the presence of certain instructions, allow the hardware to decide which accesses are seen at what times. Therefore on an ARM system it is likely that using the wrong memory ordering would result in a memory corruption, even if the compiler itself doesn't reorder the memory accesses in a buggy way.
The flaw was corrected by https://github.com/mvdnes/spin-rs/pull/66.
- Record
RUSTSEC-2019-0013- CVSS 3.1
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Updated
- 2026-11-02
Affected products
Affected packages
History
| Recorded | Changed | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| aliases | EUVD | |
| first indexed | CVE List, GitHub Advisories, NVD, OSV |
Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.
In short
CVE-2019-16137 is a high vulnerability (CVSS 7.5) in Spin-rs Project Spin-rs, published August 27, 2019. No source lists public exploit code. EPSS puts the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days at 1.42%, the 73rd percentile. Fixed in spin 0.5.2.