Memory Safety Flaw in Rust's BinaryHeap Affects Software Integrity

CVE-2015-20001

Summary

A memory safety flaw exists in the Rust standard library's BinaryHeap structure, which is not panic-safe in versions prior to 1.2.0. When operations like sift_up or sift_down_range encounter a panic during the comparison of generic elements, the binary heap is left in an inconsistent state. This inconsistency can lead to a drop of zeroed memory as an arbitrary type, ultimately jeopardizing memory safety and potentially enabling exploitation within affected applications.

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