RUSTSEC-2025-0024: 
Rust vulnerability analysis and mitigation

RUSTSEC-2025-0024 affects the crossbeam-channel Rust crate, specifically versions 0.5.12 through 0.5.14. The vulnerability was discovered on April 8, 2025, and involves a potential double-free condition in the Channel type's Drop implementation. This regression was introduced while fixing a memory leak in PR #1084 (Crossbeam PR).

The vulnerability stems from a race condition in the Channel::discardallmessages method where two paths could lead to head.block being read, but only one would swap the value. This could result in observing a non-null block pointer and attempting to free it without setting head.block to null, leading to Channel::drop making a second attempt at dropping the same pointer. The issue requires specific timing conditions and is difficult to trigger without artificial sleeps in critical points (Crossbeam PR).

When exploited, this vulnerability can result in memory corruption due to the double-free condition in the Channel type's Drop implementation. The issue affects applications using the crossbeam-channel crate for inter-thread communication (Crossbeam PR).

The issue has been fixed in crossbeam-channel version 0.5.15. Users are advised to upgrade to this version or later to address the vulnerability. The fix ensures proper handling of the head.block pointer during channel cleanup (Crossbeam PR).

The vulnerability has prompted multiple dependency updates across various Rust projects, including Materialize, Alacritty, and others. The Rust community has responded promptly to the security advisory, with maintainers actively working to update their dependencies (Crossbeam PR).