PatchSiren

PatchSiren cyber security CVE debrief

CVE-2016-7449 Opensuse CVE debrief

CVE-2016-7449 is a high-severity memory-safety issue in GraphicsMagick’s TIFF handling. According to the NVD record, TIFFGetField in coders/tiff.c can be driven by a crafted TIFF file containing an unterminated string, leading to an out-of-bounds heap read and denial of service. The CVE was published on 2017-02-06 and is rated CVSS 7.5 (network reachable, no privileges, no user interaction).

Vendor
Opensuse
Product
CVE-2016-7449
CVSS
HIGH 7.5
CISA KEV
Not listed in stored evidence
Original CVE published
2017-02-06
Original CVE updated
2026-05-13
Advisory published
2017-02-06
Advisory updated
2026-05-13

Who should care

Security teams and system owners who deploy GraphicsMagick 1.3.24, especially where TIFF files are processed from untrusted sources. Administrators of the downstream products listed in the NVD CPE data—Debian GNU/Linux 8.0, openSUSE Leap 42.1, and openSUSE 13.2—should also review their vendor advisories.

Technical summary

The NVD description attributes the flaw to TIFFGetField in GraphicsMagick 1.3.24’s coders/tiff.c. A malformed TIFF with an unterminated string can cause an out-of-bounds heap read (CWE-125), which in practice is described as a denial-of-service condition. The CVSS vector is CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H, indicating a remotely triggerable availability impact without authentication or user interaction.

Defensive priority

High. The issue is remotely reachable, requires no privileges, and is rated High with availability impact. Prioritize patching any exposed image-processing workflows that accept TIFF content from users, uploads, or third-party feeds.

Recommended defensive actions

  • Apply the vendor-provided security updates referenced in the advisories for your platform.
  • Identify systems running GraphicsMagick 1.3.24 or downstream packages that bundle the affected code path.
  • Restrict or sanitize untrusted TIFF inputs until patched, especially in internet-facing services.
  • Monitor image-processing services for crashes or abnormal resource usage that could indicate malformed-file handling issues.
  • Use the linked vendor and distribution advisories to confirm remediation status for Debian and openSUSE releases.

Evidence notes

This debrief is based on the supplied NVD CVE record and the linked references in the corpus. The vulnerability description, CVSS vector, and CWE-125 classification come from the NVD data. The reference list includes openSUSE advisories, an oss-security mailing list post, a Red Hat Bugzilla issue, a SecurityFocus entry, and a Debian LTS announcement, but the corpus does not provide a fixed-version table or exploit details.

Official resources

CVE published 2017-02-06. The supplied record shows a later metadata modification on 2026-05-13, but that date is not the vulnerability disclosure date.