CVE-2024-25269
📋 TL;DR
A memory leak vulnerability in libheif's JpegEncoder::Encode function allows attackers to cause denial of service by exhausting system memory. This affects all applications using vulnerable versions of libheif to process HEIF/HEIC images. The impact is limited to DoS rather than code execution.
💻 Affected Systems
- libheif
- Applications using libheif library
📦 What is this software?
Libheif by Struktur
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete system unavailability due to memory exhaustion, potentially affecting all services on the same host
Likely Case
Application crashes or becomes unresponsive when processing malicious HEIF/HEIC images
If Mitigated
Limited to single application crash if proper memory limits and isolation are in place
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires only a malicious HEIF/HEIC image file, no authentication needed
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: 1.17.7 or later
Vendor Advisory: https://github.com/strukturag/libheif/issues/1073
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Update libheif to version 1.17.7 or later. 2. Rebuild/reinstall applications using libheif. 3. Restart affected services.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Disable HEIF/HEIC processing
allConfigure applications to reject HEIF/HEIC image formats
Memory limit enforcement
linuxSet memory limits on applications using libheif
ulimit -v [LIMIT] # Linux memory limit
docker run --memory=[LIMIT] # Container memory limit
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement strict input validation to reject suspicious HEIF/HEIC files
- Deploy memory monitoring and alerting for applications using libheif
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check libheif version: `libheif --version` or `ldconfig -p | grep libheif`Check Version:
libheif --version 2>/dev/null || pkg-config --modversion libheif 2>/dev/null || echo 'libheif not found'Verify Fix Applied:
Confirm version is 1.17.7 or later: `libheif --version | grep -q '1\.1[7-9]\.[7-9]'`📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Application crashes with memory allocation errors
- High memory usage spikes during image processing
Network Indicators:
- Repeated uploads of HEIF/HEIC files to web applications
SIEM Query:
source="application.log" AND ("out of memory" OR "memory allocation failed") AND process="*libheif*"