CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-42396

Untrusted Pointer Dereference

Published: Jan 26, 2023 | Modified: Nov 27, 2024
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
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected installations of PDF-XChange Editor. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must visit a malicious page or open a malicious file. The specific flaw exists within the parsing of XPS files. The issue results from the lack of proper validation of a user-supplied value prior to dereferencing it as a pointer. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code in the context of the current process. Was ZDI-CAN-18278.

Weakness

The product obtains a value from an untrusted source, converts this value to a pointer, and dereferences the resulting pointer.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Pdf-xchange_editor Pdf-xchange * 9.5.366.0 (excluding)

Extended Description

An attacker can supply a pointer for memory locations that the product is not expecting. If the pointer is dereferenced for a write operation, the attack might allow modification of critical state variables, cause a crash, or execute code. If the dereferencing operation is for a read, then the attack might allow reading of sensitive data, cause a crash, or set a variable to an unexpected value (since the value will be read from an unexpected memory location). There are several variants of this weakness, including but not necessarily limited to:

References