CVE-2009-1721

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.8 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 4.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2009-07-31 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-824

Description

The decompression implementation in the Imf::hufUncompress function in OpenEXR 1.2.2 and 1.6.1 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via vectors that trigger a free of an uninitialized pointer.

Affected products

macOS: before 10.5.8 — fixed in 10.5.8
Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 8.04, 8.10, 9.04
Debian Linux: 4.0, 5.0
Fedoraproject Fedora: 10, 11
AcademySoftwareFoundation openexr: 1.2.2, 1.6.1
Opensuse: 10.0, 10.3, 11.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: macOS 10.5.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://lists.apple.com/archives/security-announce/2009/Aug/msg00001.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2009-09/msg00000.html
http://release.debian.org/proposed-updates/stable_diffs/openexr_1.6.1-3%2Blenny3.debdiff
http://secunia.com/advisories/36030
http://secunia.com/advisories/36032
http://secunia.com/advisories/36096
http://secunia.com/advisories/36123
http://secunia.com/advisories/36753
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/o/openexr/openexr_1.2.2-4.3+etch2.diff.gz
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/o/openexr/openexr_1.6.1-3+lenny3.diff.gz
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3757
http://www.debian.org/security/2009/dsa-1842

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