CVE-2025-8961

The vulnerability resides in the main function of tiffcrop.c in LibTIFF 4.7.0. The root cause is an invalid memory access during deallocation, where a corrupted pointer is passed to free, leading to a segmentation fault [1][2]. This occurs when the utility processes a crafted TIFF image with unsupported parameters, such as an invalid bit depth of 84, triggering the error handling and subsequent memory corruption [2].

The attack vector is strictly local; an attacker must deliver a malicious TIFF file to the tiffcrop tool. No special privileges are required beyond access to the file system. The exploit code has been made publicly available, increasing the likelihood of targeted denial-of-service attacks [1].

The immediate impact is a program crash, resulting in denial of service. While the official description mentions memory corruption, the referenced analysis only confirms a segmentation fault without evidence of code execution [1]. The CVSS score of 3.3 reflects the low severity due to local attack scope and limited impact.

The vulnerability affects LibTIFF 4.7.0. The latest stable release is v4.7.1 [3], but it is unclear whether it includes a fix. Users are advised to upgrade or avoid processing untrusted TIFF images with tiffcrop until a patched version is confirmed.