Vulnerability RUSTSEC-2026-0486

The extended-attribute functions in rustix::fs (getxattr, lgetxattr, fgetxattr, listxattr, llistxattr and flistxattr) write into a Buffer and then mark as many bytes initialized as the system call reported. When the buffer has zero length, the operating system treats the call as a size query: it writes nothing and returns the size of the attribute value or of the name list. rustix still marked that many bytes as initialized.

Passing a Vec whose length equals its capacity through spare_capacity gives such a zero-length buffer, and rustix then set the vector's length past its capacity over memory that was never written. This is undefined behavior reachable from safe code. With an empty &mut [MaybeUninit<u8>] the call panics instead.

From 1.1.6 these functions return an empty result for a zero-length buffer, and new getxattr_query, lgetxattr_query, fgetxattr_query, listxattr_query, llistxattr_query and flistxattr_query functions return the size. The 0.38 series did not have the Buffer API and is not affected.