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libpng png_handle_iCCP() NULL pointer dereference

Vulnerability Note VU#236656

Original Release Date: 2004-08-04 | Last Revised: 2007-07-21

Overview

The Portable Network Graphics library (libpng) contains a remotely exploitable vulnerability that 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.

Under some circumstances, a null pointer may be dereferenced during a memory allocation in the png_handle_iCCP() function. As a result, a PNG file with particular characteristics could cause the affected application to crash. Similar errors are reported to exist in other locations within libpng.

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, 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.

Vendor Information

236656
 

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References

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Chris Evans for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Chad Dougherty and Damon Morda.

Other Information

CVE IDs: CVE-2004-0598
Severity Metric: 1.05
Date Public: 2004-08-04
Date First Published: 2004-08-04
Date Last Updated: 2007-07-21 02:33 UTC
Document Revision: 17

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