Executive brief
gdk-pixbuf is an image processing library used by many desktop applications to display and manipulate images. A flaw in its handling of Apple Icon Image (.icns) files allows an attacker to trigger a memory access violation by crafting a malicious icon file. This can crash applications that open the file or potentially leak sensitive data from memory, such as cryptographic keys or other secrets stored nearby in the application's memory.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a heap out-of-bounds read (CWE-125) in the uncompress() function that decompresses RLE-encoded ICNS icon data. The function fails to properly validate buffer boundaries during decompression, allowing an attacker to read data beyond the allocated heap buffer. Attack requires a local attacker to provide a specially crafted .icns file and requires user interaction (the application or user must open the malicious file). Exploitation results in denial of service (application crash) or information disclosure from adjacent memory regions. The flaw affects gdk-pixbuf's ICNS format handler and patches should be available from the upstream GNOME project.
Affected products
- GNOME gdk-pixbuf
Timeline
- 2026-09-08: disclosed
- 2026-09-08: advisory