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SYNTHESIS OF THE VULNERABILITY

An attacker can create an image containing a malicious tEXT field
in order to create a denial of service in applications linked to
libpng.

Gravity: 1/4

Consequences: denial of service of client

Provenance: document

Means of attack: no proof of concept, no attack

Ability of attacker: expert (4/4)

Confidence: confirmed by the editor (5/5)

Diffusion of the vulnerable configuration: high (3/3)

Creation date: 19/02/2009

IMPACTED PRODUCTS
– Fedora
– Unix - plateform

DESCRIPTION OF THE VULNERABILITY

The libpng library is used by applications creating or
manipulating PNG (Portable Network Graphics) image files.

A PNG image is composed of a series of fragments identified by
four letters:
– IHDR : header
– IDAT : image data
– tEXT : text
– etc.

When the png_handle_tEXt() function of pngrutil.c analyzes a PNG
image containing a malformed tEXT filed, a memory area is not
freed.

An attacker can therefore create an image containing a malicious
tEXT field in order to create a denial of service in applications
linked to libpng.

CHARACTERISTICS

Identifiers: 468990, FEDORA-2008-9379, FEDORA-2008-9393,
VIGILANCE-VUL-8480

http://vigilance.fr/vulnerability/libpng-memory-leak-via-tEXT-8480