In affected versions, after a Report is constructed using wrap_err or
wrap_err_with to attach a message of type D onto an error of type E, then
using downcast to recover ownership of either the value of type D or the
value of type E, one of two things can go wrong:
-
If downcasting to
E, there remains a value of typeDto be dropped. It is incorrectly "dropped" by runningE's drop behavior, rather thanD's. For example ifDis&strandEisstd::io::Error, there would be a call ofstd::io::Error::dropin which the reference received by theDropimpl does not refer to a valid value of typestd::io::Error, but instead to&str. -
If downcasting to
D, there remains a value of typeEto be dropped. WhenDandEdo not happen to be the same size,E's drop behavior is incorrectly executed in the wrong location. The reference received by theDropimpl may point left or right of the realEvalue that is meant to be getting dropped.
In both cases, when the Report contains an error E that has nontrivial drop
behavior, the most likely outcome is memory corruption.
When the Report contains an error E that has trivial drop behavior (for
example a Utf8Error) but where D has nontrivial drop behavior (such as
String), the most likely outcome is that downcasting to E would leak D.