VulnerabilityPublished 1 Jul 2026

CVE-2026-54786: bytecodealliance wasmtime · Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime

Affects bytecodealliance wasmtimeSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 2.3 Low · fixed in 45.0.2 : update bytecodealliance wasmtime when convenient.

Data as of 13 Nov 2026, 23:54 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score

2.3Low

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 31% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 45.0.2, 44.0.3, 36.0.11 +1

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:L

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Attack Requirements: Present
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None
Vulnerable system integrity: None
Vulnerable system availability: Low
Subsequent system confidentiality: None
Subsequent system integrity: None
Subsequent system availability: Low

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable system is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed below, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed “remotely exploitable” and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: The attacker must take no measurable action to exploit the vulnerability. The attack requires no target-specific circumvention to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable system.
Attack Requirements: Present: The successful attack depends on the presence of specific deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system that enable the attack. These include: a race condition must be won to successfully exploit the vulnerability (the successfulness of the attack is conditioned on execution conditions that are not under full control of the attacker, or the attack may need to be launched multiple times against a single target before being successful); the attacker must inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim (e.g. vulnerabilities requiring an on-path attacker).
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker requires privileges that provide basic capabilities that are typically limited to settings and resources owned by a single low-privileged user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges has the ability to access only non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any human user, other than the attacker.
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the Vulnerable System are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Subsequent System or all confidentiality impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Subsequent System or all integrity impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the Subsequent System are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the Subsequent System.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 1 Jul 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 13 Nov 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade wasmtime to 45.0.2, 44.0.3, 36.0.11 or 24.0.10; bytecodealliance/wasmtime to 44.0.3, 36.0.11 or 24.0.10.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
bytecodealliancewasmtime	Affected >=45.0.0 <45.0.2	Fixed in 45.0.2
bytecodealliancewasmtime	Affected >=37.0.0 <44.0.3	Fixed in 44.0.3
bytecodealliancewasmtime	Affected >=25.0.0 <36.0.11	Fixed in 36.0.11
bytecodealliancewasmtime	Affected <24.0.10	Fixed in 24.0.10
GitHubbytecodealliance/wasmtime`pkg:github/bytecodealliance/wasmtime`Other threats	Affected <24.0.10 >=25.0.0 <36.0.11 >=37.0.0 <44.0.3 =45.0.0 =45.0.1	Fixed in 24.0.10 36.0.11 44.0.3

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

This issue has been fixed in wasmtime versions 24.0.10, 36.0.11, 44.0.3, and 45.0.2. Users should upgrade to one of these fixed versions or later. There is no vendor advisory indicating alternative mitigations or that no action is required. If upgrading is not immediately possible, limiting or denying guest access to file descriptors can prevent exploitation.

Description

Wasmtime is a runtime for WebAssembly. All versions prior to 24.0.10; versions 25.0.0 through those before 36.0.11; versions 37.0.0 through those before 44.0.3; and versions 45.0.0 and 45.0.1 contain a native implementation of WASIp1 which suffers from a leak in the fd_renumber function where the file descriptor being renumbered to is not properly closed. Wasmtime's implementation erroneously only updated the table of descriptors for WASIp1 and didn't update the underlying table of descriptors used by the host. This behavior means that while fd_renumber works correctly from a guest's perspective it ends up leaking resources in the host that aren't cleaned up until the corresponding Store is destroyed. In a loop, guests can use fd_renumber to cause hosts to exhaust both resources and file descriptors. This bug only affects the native implementation of WASIp1, meaning that only runtimes which load core wasm modules and expose fd_renumber are affected. Runtimes are additionally only affected if they expose the ability to acquire a file descriptor, such as opening a file. For runtimes that deny access to files they are unaffected. This issue has been fixed in versions 24.0.10, 36.0.11, 44.0.3, and 45.0.2.

Impact

The vulnerability causes a resource leak on the host system by not properly closing file descriptors during renumbering, potentially leading to exhaustion of host resources and file descriptors. This can degrade host system stability or cause denial of service conditions. The impact is limited to affected wasmtime runtimes that expose fd_renumber and allow file descriptor acquisition. The CVSS score is low (2.3), reflecting limited severity and complexity of exploitation.

CWE-772Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not release a resource after its effective lifetime has ended, i.e., after the resource is no longer needed.
Requirements · Language Selection
Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
Implementation
It is good practice to be responsible for freeing all resources you allocate and to be consistent with how and where you free resources in a function. If you allocate resources that you intend to free upon completion of the function, you must be sure to free the resources at all exit points for that function including…
Operation · Architecture and Design · Resource Limitation
Use resource-limiting settings provided by the operating system or environment. For example, when managing system resources in POSIX, setrlimit() can be used to set limits for certain types of resources, and getrlimit() can determine how many resources are available.
Attack patterns
HTTP DoS (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/security/advisories/GHSA-3p27-qvp9-27qf (opens in a new tab)

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 9 Jul 2026, 09:23 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-772, CWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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