CVE-2021-3496
Published: 22 April 2021
Summary
CVE-2021-3496 is a high-severity Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer (CWE-119) vulnerability in Jhead Project Jhead. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, ranked in the top 34.7% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2021-26817
Vulnerability details
A heap-based buffer overflow was found in jhead in version 3.06 in Get16u() in exif.c when processing a crafted file.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Memory protections (e.g., W^X, ASLR) make exploitation of buffer-boundary violations far harder to turn into code execution.
Ongoing control assessments and code testing (static/dynamic analysis, fuzzing) surface memory buffer restriction failures, which are then remediated before release.
Managed runtimes used by platform-independent applications (e.g., JVM, CLR) enforce memory safety, preventing most buffer overflows that require direct memory manipulation.
Detects exploitation attempts that produce memory corruption, crashes, or anomalous behavior.