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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2021-45985 json

In Lua 5.4.3, an erroneous finalizer called during a tail call leads to a heap-based buffer over-read.

published 2023-04-10 3 y ago modified 2026-09-08 2 mo ago also BIT-lua-2021-45985 , EUVD-2021-32691 , JLSEC-2026-559

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.4%
EPSS 1.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 72%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In Lua 5.4.3, an erroneous finalizer called during a tail call leads to a heap-based buffer over-read.

Patch / fix

  • bitnami lua 5.4.4
  • julia Lua_jll 5.4.4+0
  • lua lua 5.4.4
  • lua5.4 Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.4.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-45985

  • lua CBL-Mariner 2.0 5.4.3-5
  • memcached CBL-Mariner 2.0 1.6.13-3
  • ntopng CBL-Mariner 2.0, Azure Linux 3.0 5.2.1-2

azure linux advisories AZL-26047AZL-26155AZL-26158AZL-35066

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-45985 updated cvss 7.5

lua: heap-based buffer over-read

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 lua Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 lua Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 lua, lua-libs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 lua, lua-libs
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
20 mo ago

Exploit prediction

1.42% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 72% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • lua-users.org http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2021-12/msg00019.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
OSV 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
bitnami lua
>=5.4.0, <5.4.4
5.4.4
julia Lua_jll
>=5.4.3+0, <5.4.4+0
5.4.4+0

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.