CVE-2019-25010

Vulnerability

Overview

CVE-2019-25010 is a type confusion vulnerability in the Rust failure crate (versions through 2019-11-13) [1]. The crate's __private_get_type_id__ method, intended as a private implementation detail, can be overridden by external code. This allows an attacker to cause type confusion during downcast operations, breaking Rust's memory safety guarantees [3][4].

Exploitation

An attacker can define a type that overrides __private_get_type_id__ to return a different type identifier than the actual type. When the failure crate performs a downcast using this method, it may incorrectly cast a value to an unrelated type. The vulnerability is remotely exploitable with no authentication or user interaction required, as reflected by its CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (Critical) [3].

Impact

Successful exploitation can lead to arbitrary memory read and write, potentially resulting in full compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The failure crate is deprecated and no patched versions exist; all versions are affected [1][3].

Mitigation

The failure crate has been deprecated in favor of alternatives such as anyhow and thiserror [1]. Users should migrate to these or other error-handling libraries. The vulnerability is tracked in the RustSec advisory database as RUSTSEC-2019-0036 [3]. No official patch is available, so migration is the only effective mitigation.