Cisco Talos discovered multiple flaws in the LEADTOOLS toolkits

Cisco Talos security researchers discovered multiple flaws in the LEADTOOLS imaging toolkits that could lead to code execution on the target system. LEAD addressed them this week.

Security experts at Cisco Talos discovered four High severity vulnerabilities in the LEADTOOLS imaging toolkits that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code on the target system.

LEADTOOLS is a collection of comprehensive toolkits to integrate document, medical, multimedia, and imaging technologies into desktop, server, tablet, and mobile applications.

The experts discovered multiple issues that could be exploited by remote attackers to trigger denial-of-service (DoS) conditions and execute arbitrary code on vulnerable systems.

The first vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-5084, is a heap out-of-bounds write issue that resides in the TIF-parsing functionality of LEADTOOLS 20.

An attacker could exploit the flaw by using a specially crafted TIF image.

“An exploitable heap out-of-bounds write vulnerability exists in the TIF-parsing functionality of LEADTOOLS 20. A specially crafted TIF image can cause an offset beyond the bounds of a heap allocation to be written, potentially resulting in code execution.” reads the security advisory published by Talos. “An attacker can specially craft a TIF image to trigger this vulnerability.”

The second vulnerability tracked as CVE-2019-5099 is an exploitable integer underflow issue that resides in the CMP-parsing functionality of LEADTOOLS 20. The flaw could be exploited using a specially crafted CMP image file.

“An exploitable integer underflow vulnerability exists in the CMP-parsing functionality of LEADTOOLS 20. A specially crafted CMP image file can cause an integer underflow, potentially resulting in code execution.” continues the post. “An attacker can specially craft a CMP image to trigger this vulnerability. “

Experts also discovered an integer overflow issue in the BMP header parsing functionality of LEADTOOLS 20 tracked as CVE-2019-5100 that could potentially result in code execution.

The last issue discovered by Cisco Talos is an exploitable heap overflow vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-5125, that exists in the JPEG2000-parsing functionality of LEADTOOLS 20.

The vulnerability could be exploited using a specially crafted J2K image file that can cause an out-of-bounds write of a heap buffer

The same as with the first two bugs, an attacker looking to trigger these weaknesses would need specially crafted BMP and J2K image files.

Talos experts confirmed that version 20.0.2019.3.15 of LEADTOOLS is affected by these vulnerabilities that received a CVSS score of 8.8.

The vulnerabilities were discovered in early September and reported them to LEAD Technologies Inc. on September 10. The company addressed the issues with a patch earlier this week.

Talos team also released SNORT rules that allow users to detect exploitation attempts.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – LEADTOOLS, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.