CVE-2024-6239
📋 TL;DR
A vulnerability in Poppler's Pdfinfo utility allows attackers to cause denial of service by crashing the application when using the -dests parameter with specially crafted PDF files. This affects systems running vulnerable versions of Poppler's pdfinfo tool. The impact is limited to availability of the pdfinfo utility itself.
💻 Affected Systems
- Poppler pdfinfo utility
📦 What is this software?
Poppler by Freedesktop
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Complete denial of service for pdfinfo utility, potentially disrupting PDF processing workflows that rely on this tool.
Likely Case
Temporary unavailability of pdfinfo utility when processing malicious PDF files, requiring restart of the process.
If Mitigated
Minimal impact if pdfinfo is not exposed to untrusted input or if patched versions are used.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires ability to provide malicious PDF input to pdfinfo with -dests parameter.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: Check Red Hat advisories RHSA-2024:5305 and RHSA-2024:9167 for specific patched versions
Vendor Advisory: https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2024-6239
Restart Required: No
Instructions:
1. Update Poppler packages using your distribution's package manager. 2. For Red Hat systems: 'yum update poppler' or 'dnf update poppler'. 3. Verify the update installed successfully.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Avoid -dests parameter
allDo not use the -dests parameter with pdfinfo when processing untrusted PDF files
Input validation
allValidate PDF files before processing with pdfinfo, especially when using -dests parameter
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Restrict access to pdfinfo utility to trusted users only
- Implement strict input validation for PDF files processed by pdfinfo
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check Poppler version: 'pdfinfo --version' or 'rpm -q poppler' (Red Hat) or 'dpkg -l | grep poppler' (Debian/Ubuntu)Check Version:
pdfinfo --versionVerify Fix Applied:
Verify Poppler package version matches or exceeds patched version from Red Hat advisories📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- pdfinfo process crashes
- segmentation faults in pdfinfo logs
- unexpected termination of pdfinfo
Network Indicators:
- None - local utility only
SIEM Query:
Process termination events for pdfinfo with exit code indicating crash (e.g., SIGSEGV)🔗 References
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:5305
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:9167
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2024-6239
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2293594
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2024-6239
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2293594
