A stale read bug in SQLite's WAL (Write-Ahead Logging) checkpoint mechanism allowed committed WAL frames to be incorrectly discarded for sixteen years. The author reproduced the race condition using only the public SQLite API, demonstrating both lost writes and database file corruption within seconds via a 100-line C workload.
Background
SQLite is one of the most widely deployed database engines globally, used in countless applications and embedded systems. WAL mode is a key feature enabling concurrent read-write operations while providing crash safety guarantees.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- Aug 25, 2026 at 06:46 PM
- Score
- 7.0 / 10