CVE-2026-47261: wasmtime-wasi: WASI path_open(TRUNCATE) bypasses `FilePerms::WRITE` host restriction
(updated )
In wasmtime-wasi, when a filesystem preopen is given DirPerms::all() and FilePerms::READ without FilePerms::WRITE, this wasmtime-wasi enforced access control mechanism can be bypassed by using the wasip2 descriptor.open-at or wasip1 path_open interfaces by opening a file with OpenFlags::TRUNCATE oflag only, for example:
dir_descriptor.open_at(
PathFlags::empty(),
FILENAME,
OpenFlags::TRUNCATE,
DescriptorFlags::READ,
)
wasip1::path_open(
dir_fd,
0,
FILENAME,
wasip1::OFLAGS_TRUNC,
wasip1::RIGHTS_FD_READ,
0,
0
)
The root cause is that the clause that considered OpenFlags::TRUNCATE did not set open_mode |= OpenMode::WRITE;, used later in that function for the access control check against FilePerms for whether opening that file is permitted. With the bug corrected, these calls to open-at and path_open fail with error-code.not-permitted and ERRNO_PERM respectively.
The bug in crates/wasi/src/filesystem.rs, Dir::open_at, lines 967–969:
if oflags.contains(OpenFlags::TRUNCATE) {
opts.truncate(true).write(true);
}
and the single line fix is:
if oflags.contains(OpenFlags::TRUNCATE) {
opts.truncate(true).write(true);
open_mode |= OpenMode::WRITE;
}
Only wasmtime-wasi embeddings that use a combination of DirPerms::MUTATE with FilePerms::READ are affected by this bug, e.g. those that use in the WasiCtxBuilder:
builder.preopened_dir("readonly", "readonly", DirPerms::READ | DirPerms::MUTATE, FilePerms::READ);
In particular, the Wasmtime project’s wasmtime-cli’s use of wasmtime-wasi is not affected, because it always sets FilePerms::all() for all preopens.
References
- github.com/advisories/GHSA-2r75-cxrj-cmph
- github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/releases/tag/v24.0.9
- github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/releases/tag/v36.0.10
- github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/releases/tag/v44.0.2
- github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/releases/tag/v45.0.0
- github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/security/advisories/GHSA-2r75-cxrj-cmph
- nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-47261
- rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2026-0149.html
Code Behaviors & Features
Detect and mitigate CVE-2026-47261 with GitLab Dependency Scanning
Secure your software supply chain by verifying that all open source dependencies used in your projects contain no disclosed vulnerabilities. Dependency Scanning using SBOM also detects vulnerabilities from proprietary advisories that this site does not include. Learn more about Dependency Scanning using SBOM →