Denial of service in QPDF

1) Resource exhaustion

EUVDB-ID: #VU12631

Risk: Low

CVSSv3.1: 4.6 [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2018-9918

CWE-ID: CWE-400 - Resource exhaustion

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause DoS condition on the target system.

The weakness exists in the QPDFObjectHandle and QPDF_Dictionary classes due to mishandling certain "expected dictionary key but found non-name object" cases because nesting in direct objects is not restricted. A remote attacker can trigger stack exhaustion and cause the service to crash.

Mitigation

Install update from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

QPDF: 8.0 rc1 - 8.0.a1

External links

http://github.com/qpdf/qpdf/issues/202

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote non-authenticated attacker via the Internet.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.