CVE-2019-16351

Vulnerability

In ffjpeg versions before 2019-08-18, a NULL pointer dereference vulnerability exists in the huffman_decode_step() function in huffman.c at line 371 [1]. The vulnerability occurs when the function is called with a zero pointer (phc), leading to a read access violation. This affects the master branch at commit 627c8a9 [1].

Exploitation

An attacker can trigger the vulnerability by providing a specially crafted JPEG file and executing ./ffjpeg -d $POC [1]. The attacker does not need authentication or special privileges; only the ability to supply a malicious file as input to the ffjpeg decoder. No user interaction beyond running the application is required.

Impact

Successful exploitation results in a segmentation fault, causing the application to crash. This is a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. No other impact (such as code execution or data corruption) is reported in the available reference [1].

Mitigation

No fix information is available in the provided reference [1]. Users should update to a version after 2019-08-18 if a fix has been released. Further details may be available from the project's repository.