CVE-2026-50142
HighCVSS 7.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk44th percentile - higher than 44% of all known CVEs
Summary
libheif from 1.19.0 to 1.23.0 has a vulnerability allowing unbounded heap allocation when processing a crafted HEIF sequence with msf1 brand. Box_stsz::parse() applies max_sequence_frames only to variable-size samples, and Track::load() uses 32-bit arithmetic that can bypass consistency checks. This can lead to gigabytes of memory allocation, crashing or stalling the process.
Risk Assessment
A remote attacker can cause memory exhaustion, leading to crashes or hangs in applications using libheif, potentially causing denial of service.
Recommendation
Upgrade libheif to version 1.23.0 or later, which includes the fix.
Original NVD description (English source)
libheif is a HEIF and AVIF file format decoder and encoder. From 1.19.0 until 1.23.0, a crafted HEIF sequence accepted by heif_context_read_from_memory() with the msf1 sequence brand can cause unbounded heap allocation. In libheif/sequences/seq_boxes.cc, Box_stsz::parse() applies max_sequence_frames only to variable-size samples, so fixed-size mode accepts an attacker-controlled sample_count without a bound. In libheif/sequences/track.cc, Track::load() also adds current_sample_idx and samples_per_chunk in 32-bit arithmetic, allowing the consistency check to be bypassed by wraparound. The resulting values reach the Chunk::Chunk() allocation path, which can consume gigabytes of memory and crash or stall the process through memory exhaustion. This issue is fixed in version 1.23.0.