Description
libass is a portable subtitle renderer for the ASS/SSA (Advanced Substation Alpha/Substation Alpha) subtitle format. From 0.17.4 until 0.17.5, libass event pruning does not guard negative Matroska `ReadOrder` values, allowing an attacker to clear arbitrarily many bits to zero at attacker-controlled positions near the NULL pointer. Exploitation requires a malicious Matroska stream loaded through `ass_process_chunk`, enabled read-order checking, and later pruning of the malicious events. Read-order checking is enabled by default unless `ass_set_check_readorder` is called with zero; pruning must occur explicitly through `ass_prune_events` or through automatic pruning previously enabled with `ass_configure_prune`. On common systems with arithmetic right shift, 32-bit int values, the upper address region reserved to the kernel, and matching binary/kernel architecture, the expected consequence is denial of service. More extensive exploitation on uncommon systems is theoretical and strongly constrained by the target addresses, bit-clearing-only mutation, and ASLR. This issue is fixed in version 0.17.5.
Published: 2026-10-30
Score: 7.3 High
EPSS: < 1% Very Low
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

Analysis and contextual insights are available on OpenCVE Cloud.

Remediation

No vendor fix or workaround currently provided.

Additional remediation guidance may be available on OpenCVE Cloud.

Tracking

Sign in to view the affected projects.

Advisories

No advisories yet.

History

Sat, 31 Oct 2026 00:15:00 +0100

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Libass
Libass libass
Vendors & Products Libass
Libass libass

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 16:00:00 +0100

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description libass is a portable subtitle renderer for the ASS/SSA (Advanced Substation Alpha/Substation Alpha) subtitle format. From 0.17.4 until 0.17.5, libass event pruning does not guard negative Matroska `ReadOrder` values, allowing an attacker to clear arbitrarily many bits to zero at attacker-controlled positions near the NULL pointer. Exploitation requires a malicious Matroska stream loaded through `ass_process_chunk`, enabled read-order checking, and later pruning of the malicious events. Read-order checking is enabled by default unless `ass_set_check_readorder` is called with zero; pruning must occur explicitly through `ass_prune_events` or through automatic pruning previously enabled with `ass_configure_prune`. On common systems with arithmetic right shift, 32-bit int values, the upper address region reserved to the kernel, and matching binary/kernel architecture, the expected consequence is denial of service. More extensive exploitation on uncommon systems is theoretical and strongly constrained by the target addresses, bit-clearing-only mutation, and ASLR. This issue is fixed in version 0.17.5.
Title libass: Out-of-bounds bit clears for negative Matroska ReadOrder values
Weaknesses CWE-787
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 7.3, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}


cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: GitHub_M

Published:

Updated: 2026-10-30T14:52:21.006Z

Reserved: 2026-07-10T17:38:57.110Z

Link: CVE-2026-61626

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Deferred

Published: 2026-10-30T15:16:52.500

Modified: 2026-10-30T19:39:14.897

Link: CVE-2026-61626

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-10-30T23:50:37Z

Weaknesses