CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-29769 — libvips is a demand-driven, horizontally threaded image processing library

High CVSS 8.5

libvips is a demand-driven, horizontally threaded image processing library. The heifsave operation could incorrectly determine the presence of an alpha channel in an input when it was not possible to determine the colour interpretation, known internally within libvips as "multiband". There aren't many ways to create a "multiband" input, but it is possible with a well-crafted TIFF image. If a "multiband" TIFF input image had 4 channels and HEIF-based output was requested, this led to libvips creating a 3 channel HEIF image without an alpha channel but then attempting to write 4 channels of data. This caused a heap buffer overflow, which could crash the process. This vulnerability is fixed in 8.16.1.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.5 (4.0)
Published
2025-04-07
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-122

Affected products

  • libvips / libvips
  • debian / debian_linux / 11.0

Matched remediation archetype

Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption

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Check exposure

  • Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
  • Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
  • Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
  • Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
  • Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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