CVE-2026-73471
Description
A flaw was found in GStreamer gst-plugins-good (avidemux). In the Nikon metadata tag parser, a pointer can be dereferenced without verifying that data remains in the buffer, causing out-of-bounds reads. Because avidemux is auto-plugged by playbin, decodebin, and gst-discoverer, opening or previewing a crafted AVI is sufficient to trigger the issue. Fixed upstream in gst-plugins-good 1.28.6 (GStreamer-SA-2026-0072).
Statement
This vulnerability is evaluated as a Moderate severity issue because successful exploitation requires local user interaction to process an untrusted media file, and the resulting memory read error typically leads to an application crash or limited information exposure rather than arbitrary code execution. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the vulnerable component is part of the GStreamer media framework commonly utilized in graphical workstation environments and desktop file previewers. Headless server installations and systems that do not run multimedia applications or automated file-indexing services are not exposed to this flaw in their standard deployment.
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Memory
An attacker could get secret values such as cryptographic keys, PII, memory addresses, or other information that could be used in additional attacks.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism
Out-of-bounds memory could contain memory addresses or other information that can be used to bypass ASLR and other protection mechanisms in order to improve the reliability of exploiting a separate weakness for code execution.
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
An attacker could cause a segmentation fault or crash by causing memory to be read outside of the bounds of the buffer. This is especially likely when the code reads a variable amount of data and assumes that a sentinel exists to stop the read operation, such as a NUL in a string.
Other
Technical Impact: Varies by Context
The read operation could produce other undefined or unexpected results.
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Seonwook Kim for reporting this issue.
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