GHSA-wq9x-qwcq-mmgf
Diesel vulnerable to Binary Protocol Misinterpretation caused by Truncating or Overflowing Casts
GHSA-wq9x-qwcq-mmgf is a high vulnerability (CVSS 8.9) in diesel, published August 23, 2024. No source lists public exploit code. Fixed in diesel 2.2.3.
- Severity
- 8.9 HighCVSS 4.0, GitHub Advisories
- Exploit chance
- UnscoredNo EPSS score yet
- Exploitation
- None knownNot on CISA’s or ENISA’s lists
- Fixed in
2.2.3diesel +1 more
Description
The following presentation at this year's DEF CON was brought to our attention on the Diesel Gitter Channel:
SQL Injection isn't Dead: Smuggling Queries at the Protocol Level
http://web.archive.org/web/20240812130923/https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2032/DEF%20CON%2032%20presentations/DEF%20CON%2032%20-%20Paul%20Gerste%20-%20SQL%20Injection%20Isn't%20Dead%20Smuggling%20Queries%20at%20the%20Protocol%20Level.pdf
(Archive link for posterity.) Essentially, encoding a value larger than 4GiB can cause the length prefix in the protocol to overflow, causing the server to interpret the rest of the string as binary protocol commands or other data.
It appears Diesel does perform truncating casts in a way that could be problematic, for example: https://github.com/diesel-rs/diesel/blob/ae82c4a5a133db65612b7436356f549bfecda1c7/diesel/src/pg/connection/stmt/mod.rs#L36
This code has existed essentially since the beginning,
so it is reasonable to assume that all published versions <= 2.2.2 are affected.
Mitigation
The prefered migration to the outlined problem is to update to a Diesel version newer than 2.2.2, which includes fixes for the problem.
As always, you should make sure your application is validating untrustworthy user input. Reject any input over 4 GiB, or any input that could encode to a string longer than 4 GiB. Dynamically built queries are also potentially problematic if it pushes the message size over this 4 GiB bound.
For web application backends, consider adding some middleware that limits the size of request bodies by default.
Resolution
Diesel now uses #[deny] directives for the following Clippy lints:
to prevent casts that will lead to precision loss or other trunctations. Additionally we performed an audit of the relevant code.
A fix is included in the 2.2.3 release.
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
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
Affected packages
What each source reports
GitHub Advisories Score used
Diesel vulnerable to Binary Protocol Misinterpretation caused by Truncating or Overflowing Casts
The following presentation at this year's DEF CON was brought to our attention on the Diesel Gitter Channel:
SQL Injection isn't Dead: Smuggling Queries at the Protocol Level
http://web.archive.org/web/20240812130923/https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2032/DEF%20CON%2032%20presentations/DEF%20CON%2032%20-%20Paul%20Gerste%20-%20SQL%20Injection%20Isn't%20Dead%20Smuggling%20Queries%20at%20the%20Protocol%20Level.pdf
(Archive link for posterity.) Essentially, encoding a value larger than 4GiB can cause the length prefix in the protocol to overflow, causing the server to interpret the rest of the string as binary protocol commands or other data.
It appears Diesel does perform truncating casts in a way that could be problematic, for example: https://github.com/diesel-rs/diesel/blob/ae82c4a5a133db65612b7436356f549bfecda1c7/diesel/src/pg/connection/stmt/mod.rs#L36
This code has existed essentially since the beginning,
so it is reasonable to assume that all published versions <= 2.2.2 are affected.
Mitigation
The prefered migration to the outlined problem is to update to a Diesel version newer than 2.2.2, which includes fixes for the problem.
As always, you should make sure your application is validating untrustworthy user input. Reject any input over 4 GiB, or any input that could encode to a string longer than 4 GiB. Dynamically built queries are also potentially problematic if it pushes the message size over this 4 GiB bound.
For web application backends, consider adding some middleware that limits the size of request bodies by default.
Resolution
Diesel now uses #[deny] directives for the following Clippy lints:
to prevent casts that will lead to precision loss or other trunctations. Additionally we performed an audit of the relevant code.
A fix is included in the 2.2.3 release.
- Record
GHSA-wq9x-qwcq-mmgf- CVSS 4.0
- 8.9 High
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P - CVSS 3.1
- 8.1 High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-89
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSV
Diesel vulnerable to Binary Protocol Misinterpretation caused by Truncating or Overflowing Casts
The following presentation at this year's DEF CON was brought to our attention on the Diesel Gitter Channel:
SQL Injection isn't Dead: Smuggling Queries at the Protocol Level
http://web.archive.org/web/20240812130923/https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2032/DEF%20CON%2032%20presentations/DEF%20CON%2032%20-%20Paul%20Gerste%20-%20SQL%20Injection%20Isn't%20Dead%20Smuggling%20Queries%20at%20the%20Protocol%20Level.pdf
(Archive link for posterity.) Essentially, encoding a value larger than 4GiB can cause the length prefix in the protocol to overflow, causing the server to interpret the rest of the string as binary protocol commands or other data.
It appears Diesel does perform truncating casts in a way that could be problematic, for example: https://github.com/diesel-rs/diesel/blob/ae82c4a5a133db65612b7436356f549bfecda1c7/diesel/src/pg/connection/stmt/mod.rs#L36
This code has existed essentially since the beginning,
so it is reasonable to assume that all published versions <= 2.2.2 are affected.
Mitigation
The prefered migration to the outlined problem is to update to a Diesel version newer than 2.2.2, which includes fixes for the problem.
As always, you should make sure your application is validating untrustworthy user input. Reject any input over 4 GiB, or any input that could encode to a string longer than 4 GiB. Dynamically built queries are also potentially problematic if it pushes the message size over this 4 GiB bound.
For web application backends, consider adding some middleware that limits the size of request bodies by default.
Resolution
Diesel now uses #[deny] directives for the following Clippy lints:
to prevent casts that will lead to precision loss or other trunctations. Additionally we performed an audit of the relevant code.
A fix is included in the 2.2.3 release.
- Record
GHSA-wq9x-qwcq-mmgf- CVSS 4.0
- 8.9 High
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P - CVSS 3.1
- 8.1 High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-89
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSVRUSTSEC-2024-0365No score
Binary Protocol Misinterpretation caused by Truncating or Overflowing Casts
The following presentation at this year's DEF CON was brought to our attention on the Diesel Gitter Channel:
SQL Injection isn't Dead: Smuggling Queries at the Protocol Level
http://web.archive.org/web/20240812130923/https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2032/DEF%20CON%2032%20presentations/DEF%20CON%2032%20-%20Paul%20Gerste%20-%20SQL%20Injection%20Isn't%20Dead%20Smuggling%20Queries%20at%20the%20Protocol%20Level.pdf
(Archive link for posterity.) Essentially, encoding a value larger than 4GiB can cause the length prefix in the protocol to overflow, causing the server to interpret the rest of the string as binary protocol commands or other data.
It appears Diesel does perform truncating casts in a way that could be problematic, for example: https://github.com/diesel-rs/diesel/blob/ae82c4a5a133db65612b7436356f549bfecda1c7/diesel/src/pg/connection/stmt/mod.rs#L36
This code has existed essentially since the beginning,
so it is reasonable to assume that all published versions <= 2.2.2 are affected.
Mitigation
The prefered migration to the outlined problem is to update to a Diesel version newer than 2.2.2, which includes fixes for the problem.
As always, you should make sure your application is validating untrustworthy user input. Reject any input over 4 GiB, or any input that could encode to a string longer than 4 GiB. Dynamically built queries are also potentially problematic if it pushes the message size over this 4 GiB bound.
For web application backends, consider adding some middleware that limits the size of request bodies by default.
Resolution
Diesel now uses #[deny] directives for the following Clippy lints:
to prevent casts that will lead to precision loss or other trunctations. Additionally we performed an audit of the relevant code.
A fix is included in the 2.2.3 release.
- Record
RUSTSEC-2024-0365- Updated
- 2026-11-02
History
| Recorded | Changed | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| first indexed | GitHub Advisories, OSV |
Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.
References
github.com/diesel-rs/diesel/pull/4170
rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2024-0365.html
crates.io/crates/diesel