JPEG library: Denial of service

Background

The JPEG library is able to load, handle and manipulate images in the JPEG format.

Description

Tavis Ormandy of the Gentoo Linux Auditing Team discovered that the vulnerable JPEG library ebuilds compile JPEG without the --maxmem feature which is not recommended.

Impact

By enticing a user to load a specially crafted JPEG image file an attacker could cause a Denial of Service, due to memory exhaustion.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

JPEG users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=media-libs/jpeg-6b-r7"