CVE-2025-46206
BaseFortify
Publication date: 2025-08-04
Last updated on: 2025-10-02
Assigner: MITRE
Description
Description
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| artifex | mupdf | to 1.25.6 (inc) |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-674 | The product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack. |
Attack-Flow Graph
AI Powered Q&A
Can you explain this vulnerability to me?
This vulnerability in Artifex MuPDF versions 1.25.6 and earlier occurs in the 'mutool clean' utility when processing a specially crafted PDF file containing cyclic /Next references in the outline structure. The function 'strip_outline()' enters infinite recursion due to these cyclic references, causing the program to exhaust its stack and crash, resulting in a denial of service. [1, 2]
How can this vulnerability impact me? :
The vulnerability can cause a denial of service by crashing the 'mutool clean' utility when it processes a maliciously crafted PDF file. This crash occurs because of infinite recursion leading to stack exhaustion, which can disrupt services or applications relying on MuPDF for PDF processing. [1, 2]
How can this vulnerability be detected on my network or system? Can you suggest some commands?
This vulnerability can be detected by attempting to process a specially crafted malicious PDF file that contains cyclic /Next references in the outline structure using the command `mutool clean poc /dev/null`. If the system enters infinite recursion and crashes, it indicates the presence of the vulnerability. The provided proof-of-concept (PoC) file can be used with this command to test for the vulnerability. [1, 2]
What immediate steps should I take to mitigate this vulnerability?
To mitigate this vulnerability, you should apply the patch committed by the vendor that introduces cycle detection in the PDF outline processing code. This patch adds marking of visited outline nodes to detect cycles and prevent infinite recursion, causing the program to throw an error instead of crashing. Updating MuPDF to a version that includes this patch or applying the patch manually will mitigate the issue. [2, 3]