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PatchSiren cyber security CVE debrief

CVE-2016-5323 Libtiff CVE debrief

CVE-2016-5323 is a high-severity denial-of-service issue in libtiff’s TIFF parsing path. A crafted TIFF image can trigger a divide-by-zero in _TIFFFax3fillruns, causing the application to crash when it processes the file.

Vendor
Libtiff
Product
CVE-2016-5323
CVSS
HIGH 7.5
CISA KEV
Not listed in stored evidence
Original CVE published
2017-01-20
Original CVE updated
2026-05-13
Advisory published
2017-01-20
Advisory updated
2026-05-13

Who should care

Teams that ship or embed libtiff, plus products and services that accept or render untrusted TIFF images. This matters most for image processing pipelines, document workflows, thumbnailing services, and any downstream package that bundles libtiff.

Technical summary

The NVD record describes a divide-by-zero condition in the _TIFFFax3fillruns function in libtiff before 4.0.6. The impact is denial of service only: CVSS 3.0 is AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H, and the weakness is mapped to CWE-369. The supplied references also point to downstream security advisories from openSUSE, Debian, and Gentoo, indicating broad packaging impact.

Defensive priority

High for any environment that processes attacker-controlled TIFF files or exposes TIFF handling in network-facing or automation workflows. The issue is remotely triggerable and requires no privileges or user interaction per the CVSS vector, so remediation should be prioritized in internet-facing or shared-service contexts.

Recommended defensive actions

  • Upgrade libtiff to version 4.0.6 or later, or apply the vendor backport provided by your operating system package maintainer.
  • Inventory applications and services that rely on libtiff indirectly, since downstream packages may need their own security updates.
  • Restrict or validate untrusted TIFF inputs in workflows that cannot be updated immediately, and monitor for crashes in image-processing components.
  • Check distro security advisories and package changelogs for the affected platform-specific fixes referenced in the NVD record.

Evidence notes

This debrief is based on the supplied NVD CVE record and listed references only. The record states that libtiff before 4.0.6 is vulnerable and that a crafted TIFF image can cause a divide-by-zero crash in _TIFFFax3fillruns. The CVSS vector supplied by NVD indicates network reachability, no privileges, and no user interaction. Published date used here is the CVE publication timestamp provided in the source corpus (2017-01-20); the later modified timestamp is not treated as the issue date.

Official resources

The CVE was published in the supplied corpus on 2017-01-20, with later metadata modification on 2026-05-13. The references in the record point to public advisories from 2016 and 2017, showing that remediation guidance was available through