CVE-2016-7448 Opensuse CVE debrief

Who should care

Teams running GraphicsMagick, especially where untrusted images are processed, should care most. This includes application owners, image-processing service operators, and package maintainers using affected downstream builds. The supplied NVD data also lists affected Debian 8.0 and openSUSE Leap 42.1 / openSUSE 13.2 platforms.

Technical summary

The vulnerable component is the Utah RLE reader in GraphicsMagick before 1.3.25. NVD describes attack vectors involving the image header and file size that can lead to CPU exhaustion or large memory allocations, which maps to a denial-of-service condition. The primary weakness is listed as CWE-399 (resource management).

Defensive priority

High for any environment that accepts or processes untrusted image files, because the issue is remotely reachable and affects availability. It is not listed in KEV in the supplied data, but the lack of authentication and the potential for resource exhaustion justify prompt remediation.

Recommended defensive actions

• Upgrade GraphicsMagick to 1.3.25 or later, or apply the vendor-maintained fix for your distribution.
• Review any systems that ingest user-supplied images to confirm whether Utah RLE handling is exposed.
• Follow the relevant distro advisories for packaged builds, including openSUSE and Debian LTS guidance where applicable.
• Limit exposure of image-processing services to untrusted input where practical, and place them behind upload validation and sandboxing controls.
• Monitor for abnormal CPU or memory growth in services that parse images, especially during file ingestion or conversion jobs.

Evidence notes

The supplied NVD record states: "The Utah RLE reader in GraphicsMagick before 1.3.25 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption or large memory allocations) via vectors involving the header information and the file size." The CVSS vector is AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H, and the primary weakness is CWE-399. References in the corpus include openSUSE advisories, an oss-security post, a Red Hat Bugzilla issue, and Debian LTS notice.

Official resources