CVE-2025-48379
Description
A critical vulnerability was identified in the Pillow image processing library. This flaw could allow a local attacker to execute arbitrary code or cause the application to crash, resulting in a denial of service. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by tricking an application into processing a specially crafted image file. The issue occurs because the library writes more data than an allocated memory buffer can hold, leading to memory corruption.
Statement
This vulnerability was rated as Important by the Red Hat Product Security Engineer. An attacker may leverage that by crafting a malicious DDS image bigger than 64k (when encoded). This happens because of the lack of size checking when writing the image data into an internal buffer. When successfully exploited, this vulnerability may lead to a local arbitrary code execution within the user privileges similar to the ones for the user running the application or a denial of service for the application consuming the Pillow library.
Mitigation
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 7.1 | 5.5 | N/A |
| Attack Vector | Local | Local | N/A |
| Attack Complexity | Low | Low | N/A |
| Privileges Required | Low | Low | N/A |
| User Interaction | None | None | N/A |
| Scope | Unchanged | Unchanged | N/A |
| Confidentiality | None | None | N/A |
| Integrity Impact | High | High | N/A |
| Availability Impact | High | None | N/A |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)
Buffer overflows generally lead to crashes. Other attacks leading to lack of availability are possible, including putting the program into an infinite loop.
Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability,Access Control
Technical Impact: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; Bypass Protection Mechanism; Modify Memory
Buffer overflows often can be used to execute arbitrary code, which is usually outside the scope of a program's implicit security policy. Besides important user data, heap-based overflows can be used to overwrite function pointers that may be living in memory, pointing it to the attacker's code. Even in applications that do not explicitly use function pointers, the run-time will usually leave many in memory. For example, object methods in C++ are generally implemented using function pointers. Even in C programs, there is often a global offset table used by the underlying runtime.
Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability,Access Control,Other
Technical Impact: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; Bypass Protection Mechanism; Other
When the consequence is arbitrary code execution, this can often be used to subvert any other security service.
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