CerealApplication · Usc

CVE-2020-11105

CRITICAL · 9.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2020-03-30
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 1.3.0 or later.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Public exploit Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
An issue was discovered in USC iLab cereal through 1.3.0. It employs caching of std::shared_ptr values, using the raw pointer address as a unique identifier. This becomes problematic if an std::shared_ptr variable goes out of scope and is freed, and a new std::shared_ptr is allocated at the same address. Serialization fidelity thereby becomes dependent upon memory layout. In short, serialized std::shared_ptr variables cannot always be expected to serialize back into their original values. This can have any number of consequences, depending on the context within which this manifests.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
CerealApplication
Affected:<= 1.3.0

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 1.3.0
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

cereal 1.3.1 or later

  1. 1. Identify all projects using the cereal library version 1.3.0 or earlier
  2. 2. Update the cereal dependency to version 1.3.1 or later in your project's build configuration (e.g., CMake, package manager, or submodule)
  3. 3. Rebuild the project to incorporate the updated cereal library
  4. 4. Test serialization/deserialization of std::shared_ptr objects to verify the fix works correctly
  5. 5. Re-run existing serialization tests to ensure no regressions

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2020-11105 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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