Vulnerability · Published May 22, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-41069libheif allows Out-of-bounds vector access leading to invalid dereference (DoS)
Medium 6.5
In plain English
A medium-severity out-of-bounds read in libheif from strukturag. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.3% (higher than 17% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
libheif is a HEIF and AVIF file format decoder and encoder. In versions 1.21.2 and prior, a malformed HEIF sequence file can trigger an out-of-bounds read in core sequence parsing logic, causing DoS. A malformed file can have stco.entry_count == 0 (creating no chunks) while still passing validation because saio.entry_count == 0 matches, but with saiz.sample_count > 0 the SampleAuxInfoReader constructor still enters its loop. This leads to an out-of-bounds dereference on the empty chunks[0] in chunked mode.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:12 | libheif | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-41069 |
| Debian:14 | libheif | 1.23.1-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-41069 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | libheif | 1.20.2-1ubuntu0.4 | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-41069 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | libheif | 1.21.2-3ubuntu0.1 | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-41069 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| strukturag | libheif | < 1.22.0 |
Weakness: CWE-125, CWE-476 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
References
- https://github.com/strukturag/libheif/security/advisories/GHSA-p82x-fpmv-576r x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/strukturag/libheif/releases/tag/v1.22.0 x_refsource_MISC