What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2011-2501

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 3.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2011-07-17 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-125

Description

The png_format_buffer function in pngerror.c in libpng 1.0.x before 1.0.55, 1.2.x before 1.2.45, 1.4.x before 1.4.8, and 1.5.x before 1.5.4 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) via a crafted PNG image that triggers an out-of-bounds read during the copying of error-message data. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of a CVE-2004-0421 regression. NOTE: this is called an off-by-one error by some sources.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 8.04, 10.04, 10.10, 11.04
• Debian Linux: 5.0, 6.0
• Fedoraproject Fedora: 14
• pnggroup libpng: from 1.0.0 before 1.0.55; from 1.2.0 before 1.2.45; from 1.4.0 before 1.4.8; from 1.5.0 before 1.5.4 — fixed in 1.0.55, 1.2.45, 1.4.8, 1.5.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: pnggroup libpng 1.0.55, 1.2.45, 1.4.8, 1.5.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://libpng.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=libpng/libpng%3Ba=commit%3Bh=65e6d5a34f49acdb362a0625a706c6b914e670af
• http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-July/062720.html
• http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2011-July/063118.html
• http://secunia.com/advisories/45046
• http://secunia.com/advisories/45289
• http://secunia.com/advisories/45405
• http://secunia.com/advisories/45415
• http://secunia.com/advisories/45460
• http://secunia.com/advisories/45486
• http://secunia.com/advisories/45492
• http://secunia.com/advisories/49660
• http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-201206-15.xml

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