CVE-2024-11991
Uninitialized memory access in Motoko incremental garbage collector
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- Dfinity
Description
Motoko's incremental garbage collector is impacted by an uninitialized memory access bug, caused by incorrect use of write barriers in a few locations. This vulnerability could potentially allow unauthorized read or write access to a Canister's memory. However, exploiting this bug requires the Canister to enable the incremental garbage collector or enhanced orthogonal persistence, which are non-default features in Motoko.
Timeline
ID reserved
By Dfinity
- 10 days later
· 10 days later
Published
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| DfinityCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | Medium5.6 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L |
| NVDNVD · Analyzed | 3.1 | Medium6.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.24% · top 84% of all CVEs (7 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 5.6.
Weakness
Affected products
- affected 0.9.0 – ≤ 0.13.3
What to do
Workaround: Disable incremental garbage collector and enhanced orthogonal persistence. i.e. do not compile with —incremental-gc or --enhanced-orthogonal-persistence options.
References (2)
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2024-11991)Record last updated .