Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2016-9453: LibTIFF out-of-bounds write in tiff2pdf

CVE-2016-9453 · Severity: high · CVSS 7.8 · Published 2017-01-27

Technologies: Libtiff. Vendors: Libtiff.

Executive brief

LibTIFF is a widely used software library for handling TIFF image files. A vulnerability in its tiff2pdf tool could allow an attacker to crash applications or potentially execute unauthorized code if a user is tricked into opening a specially crafted, malicious image file. This could lead to a loss of system availability or a compromise of the user's workstation.

Technical details

An out-of-bounds write vulnerability exists in the t2p_readwrite_pdf_image_tile function within LibTIFF's tiff2pdf tool. The flaw is triggered when processing a JPEG-compressed TIFF image where the TIFFTAG_JPEGTABLES tag has a length of one. This causes an incorrect buffer offset calculation during a memcpy operation, leading to a heap-based out-of-bounds write. An attacker can exploit this by providing a malicious file to a user, potentially achieving arbitrary code execution or causing a denial of service (crash). The issue was addressed in LibTIFF version 4.0.7.

Affected products

  • LibTIFF LibTIFF up to (excluding) 4.0.7

Timeline

  • 2016-09-28: disclosed: Initial report to LibTIFF bugzilla
  • 2016-10-08: patched: Fix committed to LibTIFF source code
  • 2017-01-27: advisory: NVD publication date

References

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