Resource exhaustion in libheif - #VU153971
Published: October 8, 2026
Vulnerability identifier: #VU153971
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 8.7 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: N/A
CWE-ID: CWE-400
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vulnerability details
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service.
The vulnerability exists due to improper enforcement of image size limits in libheif's pre-decode size checks when processing untrusted AVIF images. A remote attacker can submit a crafted AVIF whose in-band AV1 dimensions exceed its declared container dimensions, triggering excessive memory allocation before the image is rejected, to cause a denial of service.
The issue is confirmed with the libaom AV1 decoder backend and default security limits.
Affected software
libheif
Remediation
Install security update from vendor's website.
libheif - update to 1.23.5