What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2008-5907

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.0 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2009-01-15 · updated 2026-06-16

Description

The png_check_keyword function in pngwutil.c in libpng before 1.0.42, and 1.2.x before 1.2.34, might allow context-dependent attackers to set the value of an arbitrary memory location to zero via vectors involving creation of crafted PNG files with keywords, related to an implicit cast of the '\0' character constant to a NULL pointer. NOTE: some sources incorrectly report this as a double free vulnerability.

Affected products

• Debian Linux: 4.0, 5.0
• pnggroup libpng: before 1.0.42; from 1.2.0 before 1.2.34 — fixed in 1.0.42, 1.2.34

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: pnggroup libpng 1.0.42, 1.2.34. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://libpng.sourceforge.net/index.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2009-02/msg00000.html
• http://openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2009/01/09/1
• http://secunia.com/advisories/34320
• http://secunia.com/advisories/34388
• http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200903-28.xml
• http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=4B6F0239C13D0245820603C036D180BC79FBAA%40CABOTUKEXCH01.cabot.local&forum_name=png-mng-implement
• http://www.debian.org/security/2009/dsa-1750
• http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2009:051
• https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/48128
• http://libpng.sourceforge.net/index.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2009-02/msg00000.html

Get alerted when CVE-2008-5907 or the next vulnerability affects your stack