Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2016-9297: LibTiff out-of-bounds read in TIFFFetchNormalTag

CVE-2016-9297 · Severity: high · CVSS 7.5 · Published 2017-01-18

Technologies: Libtiff. Vendors: Libtiff.

Executive brief

LibTiff is a widely used software library for reading and writing Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) files. A vulnerability in this library allows a remote attacker to crash applications that process specially crafted image files. This could lead to a service outage or application instability for any software that relies on LibTiff to handle images.

Technical details

An out-of-bounds read vulnerability exists in LibTiff 4.0.6 within the TIFFFetchNormalTag function in tif_dirread.c. The issue stems from a failure to ensure that certain ASCII tags (specifically TIFF_SETGET_C16ASCII and TIFF_SETGET_C32_ASCII) are properly null-terminated. When these malformed tags are processed, subsequent calls to _TIFFPrintField() may read past the end of the allocated buffer. A remote attacker can exploit this by providing a specially crafted TIFF image, leading to an application crash (denial of service). The vulnerability was addressed in version 4.0.7 by ensuring proper null termination of these tag values.

Affected products

  • LibTiff LibTiff 4.0.6

Timeline

  • 2016-11-11: patched: Fix committed to LibTiff source repository
  • 2017-01-13: advisory: Debian security advisory DSA-3762-1 released
  • 2017-01-18: disclosed: NVD publication date

References

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