CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-24996

Improper Initialization

Published: Sep 03, 2020 | Modified: Sep 11, 2020
CVSS 3.x
7.8
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
6.8 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

There is an invalid memory access in the function TextString::~TextString() located in Catalog.cc in Xpdf 4.0.2. It can be triggered by (for example) sending a crafted pdf file to the pdftohtml binary, which allows a remote attacker to cause a Denial of Service (Segmentation fault) or possibly have unspecified other impact.

Weakness

The product does not initialize or incorrectly initializes a resource, which might leave the resource in an unexpected state when it is accessed or used.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Xpdf Xpdfreader 4.0.2 (including) 4.0.2 (including)

Potential Mitigations

  • Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
  • For example, in Java, if the programmer does not explicitly initialize a variable, then the code could produce a compile-time error (if the variable is local) or automatically initialize the variable to the default value for the variable’s type. In Perl, if explicit initialization is not performed, then a default value of undef is assigned, which is interpreted as 0, false, or an equivalent value depending on the context in which the variable is accessed.

References