The archive validator could accept certain malformed relative pointers and invalid ArchivedHashTable states. In particular, the hash table verifier did not ensure that the number of occupied buckets matched the table's declared length.

A crafted archive could pass the checks performed by the safe rkyv::access and rkyv::from bytes APIs and then cause an out-of-bounds read in later validation, lookup, or deserialization. Depending on the input, this could perform scalar or SIMD reads outside the archive buffer or crash the process.

Version 0.8.17 strengthens archive range validation and rejects hash tables whose number of occupied buckets does not match their declared length. Users who process untrusted archives should upgrade to 0.8.17 or later.