Vulnerability Note VU#160448

libpng integer overflow in image height processing

Original Release date: 04 Aug 2004 | Last revised: 04 Aug 2004

Overview

The Portable Network Graphics library (libpng) contains a remotely exploitable vulnerability which could cause affected applications to crash.

Description

The Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image format is used as an alternative to other image formats such as the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF). The libpng reference library is available for application developers to support the PNG image format.

An integer overflow error exists in the handling of PNG image height within the png_read_png() function. As a result, a PNG image with excessive height may cause an integer overflow on a memory allocation and could cause the affected application to crash.

Multiple applications support the PNG image format including web browsers, email clients, and various graphic utilities. Because multiple products have used the libpng reference library to implement native PNG image processing, multiple applications will be affected by this issue in different ways.

Impact

An attacker could cause a vulnerable application to crash by supplying a specially-crafted PNG image. Vulnerable applications that read images from network sources could be exploited remotely.

Solution

Apply a patch from the vendor

Patches have been released to address this vulnerability. Please see the Systems Affected section of this document for more details.

Systems Affected (Learn More)

VendorStatusDate NotifiedDate Updated
Apple Computer Inc.Affected16 Jul 200404 Aug 2004
libpng.orgAffected16 Jul 200404 Aug 2004
MontaVista SoftwareAffected16 Jul 200404 Aug 2004
IBMNot Affected16 Jul 200404 Aug 2004
Juniper NetworksNot Affected16 Jul 200423 Jul 2004
NEC CorporationNot Affected16 Jul 200403 Aug 2004
BSDIUnknown-23 Jul 2004
ConectivaUnknown-23 Jul 2004
Cray Inc.Unknown-23 Jul 2004
DebianUnknown-23 Jul 2004
eMC CorporationUnknown-23 Jul 2004
EngardeUnknown-23 Jul 2004
FreeBSDUnknown-23 Jul 2004
FujitsuUnknown-23 Jul 2004
Hewlett-Packard CompanyUnknown-23 Jul 2004
If you are a vendor and your product is affected, let us know.View More »

CVSS Metrics (Learn More)

Group Score Vector
Base N/A N/A
Temporal N/A N/A
Environmental N/A N/A

References

Credit

Thanks to Chris Evans for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Chad Dougherty and Damon Morda.

Other Information

  • CVE IDs: CAN-2004-0599
  • Date Public: 04 Aug 2004
  • Date First Published: 04 Aug 2004
  • Date Last Updated: 04 Aug 2004
  • Severity Metric: 0.97
  • Document Revision: 9

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