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.

References

• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-11105
• USCiLab/cereal#636