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Manipulated inline images can cause Infinite Loop in PyPDF2

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Apr 17, 2022 in py-pdf/pypdf • Updated Jun 12, 2023

Package

pip PyPDF2 (pip)

Affected versions

< 1.27.5

Patched versions

1.27.5

Description

Impact

An attacker who uses this vulnerability can craft a PDF which leads to an infinite loop if the PyPDF2 user wrote the following code:

from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader, PdfFileWriter
from PyPDF2.pdf import ContentStream

reader = PdfFileReader("malicious.pdf", strict=False)
for page in reader.pages:
    ContentStream(page.getContents(), reader)

Patches

PyPDF2==1.27.5 and later are patched.

Credits to Sebastian Krause for finding (issue) and fixing (PR) it.

References

@MartinThoma MartinThoma published to py-pdf/pypdf Apr 17, 2022
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Apr 18, 2022
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Apr 22, 2022
Reviewed Apr 22, 2022
Last updated Jun 12, 2023

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

0.092%
(40th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2022-24859

GHSA ID

GHSA-xcjx-m2pj-8g79

Source code

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