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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2025-27091 json

OpenH264 Decoding Functions Heap Overflow Vulnerability

published last yr. modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2025-5088

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.7%
EPSS 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 52%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

OpenH264 is a free license codec library which supports H.264 encoding and decoding. A vulnerability in the decoding functions of OpenH264 codec library could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to trigger a heap overflow. This vulnerability is due to a race condition between a Sequence Parameter Set (SPS) memory allocation and a subsequent non Instantaneous Decoder Refresh (non-IDR) Network Abstraction Layer (NAL) unit memory usage. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by crafting a malicious bitstream and tricking a victim user into processing an arbitrary video containing the malicious bistream. An exploit could allow the attacker to cause an unexpected crash in the victim's user decoding client and, possibly, perform arbitrary commands on the victim's host by abusing the heap overflow. This vulnerability affects OpenH264 2.5.0 and earlier releases. Both Scalable Video Coding (SVC) mode and Advanced Video Coding (AVC) mode are affected by this vulnerability. OpenH264 software releases 2.6.0 and later contained the fix for this vulnerability. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

### For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: * [Open an issue in cisco/openh264](https://github.com/cisco/openh264/issues) * Email Cisco Open Source Security ([oss-security@cisco.com](mailto:oss-security@cisco.com)) and Cisco PSIRT ([psirt@cisco.com](mailto:psirt@cisco.com))

### Credits:

* **Research:** Octavian Guzu and Andrew Calvano of Meta * **Fix ideation:** Philipp Hancke and Shyam Sadhwani of Meta * **Fix implementation:** Benzheng Zhang (@BenzhengZhang) * **Release engineering:** Benzheng Zhang (@BenzhengZhang)

Patch / fix

  • cisco openh264 2.6.0
  • openh264 Debian 12 2.3.1+dfsg-3+deb12u1
  • openh264 Debian 14, Debian 13 2.5.0+dfsg-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-27091

  • openh264 Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +1 more 2.6.0-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2025-27091

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Is CVE-2025-27091 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-27091 updated cvss 8.3

openh264: Openh264 Decoding Functions Heap Overflow Vulnerability

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
total
Assessed
last yr.

Exploit prediction

0.69% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 52% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 8.6 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA 4.0 8.6 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • cisco openh264

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.