Security Resilience

CVE-2024-13978

Memory Safety in Libtiff ≤ 4.7.0

Public PoCMemory Safety
Published
01 August 2025
Modified
17 June 2026
Patch / advisory
View advisory
CVSS Score v4 2.0
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/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
EPSS Score 0.0020 9th percentile
Risk Priority 16 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2024-13978 is a low-severity Improper Resource Shutdown or Release (CWE-404) vulnerability in Libtiff Libtiff. Its CVSS base score is 2.0 (Low).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique OS Credential Dumping (T1003); ranked at the 9th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

A10:2025 Mishandling of Exceptional Conditions

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

A vulnerability was found in LibTIFF up to 4.7.0. It has been declared as problematic. Affected by this vulnerability is the function t2p_read_tiff_init of the file tools/tiff2pdf.c of the component fax2ps. The manipulation leads to null pointer dereference. The attack…

more

needs to be approached locally. The complexity of an attack is rather high. The exploitation appears to be difficult. The patch is named 2ebfffb0e8836bfb1cd7d85c059cd285c59761a4. It is recommended to apply a patch to fix this issue.

CWE(s)
CWE-404CWE-476

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1003 OS Credential Dumping Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to dump credentials to obtain account login and credential material, normally in the form of a hash or a clear text password.
attack.mitre.org →
T1003.007 Proc Filesystem Credential Access
Adversaries may gather credentials from the proc filesystem or `/proc`.
attack.mitre.org →
T1006 Direct Volume Access Stealth
Adversaries may directly access a volume to bypass file access controls and file system monitoring.
attack.mitre.org →
T1011 Exfiltration Over Other Network Medium Exfiltration
Adversaries may attempt to exfiltrate data over a different network medium than the command and control channel.
attack.mitre.org →
T1012 Query Registry Discovery
Adversaries may interact with the Windows Registry to gather information about the system, configuration, and installed software.
attack.mitre.org →
T1016 System Network Configuration Discovery Discovery
Adversaries may look for details about the network configuration and settings, such as IP and/or MAC addresses, of systems they access or through information discovery of remote systems.
attack.mitre.org →
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2025-8534Same product: Libtiff Libtiff
CVE-2023-2908Same product: Libtiff Libtiff
CVE-2023-3316Same product: Libtiff Libtiff
CVE-2025-61143Same product: Libtiff Libtiff
CVE-2025-9165Same product: Libtiff Libtiff
CVE-2023-0797Same product: Libtiff Libtiff
CVE-2023-0798Same product: Libtiff Libtiff
CVE-2023-0795Same product: Libtiff Libtiff
CVE-2023-0796Same product: Libtiff Libtiff
CVE-2023-1916Same product: Libtiff Libtiff

Affected Assets

libtiff
libtiff
≤ 4.7.0

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

SA-11 Developer Testing and Evaluation good match

Developer testing and evaluation can discover missing or incorrect resource releases after code is written.

SA-15 Development Process, Standards, and Tools partial match

Documented development standards and tools can enforce null-safety rules and safe pointer usage.

SA-8 Security and Privacy Engineering Principles partial match

Engineering principles can require explicit resource acquisition/release patterns that stop improper shutdown from being introduced.

SC-6 Resource Availability partial match

Priority-based resource allocation limits the blast radius when released resources are not returned to the pool.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 partial match
blocks

Secure SDLC practices (static analysis, code review, safe coding standards) directly prevent NULL dereference bugs during development.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

A.5.14 Information transfer partial match
removes
A.5.15 Access control partial match
removes
A.5.16 Identity management partial match
removes
A.5.17 Authentication information partial match
removes
A.5.18 Access rights partial match
removes
A.5.37 Documented operating procedures partial match
blocks

documenting procedures for secure operation, error handling, restart/recovery and resource management (including references to 8.13/8.18) is a governance and dependency control that does not itself stop exploitation of a resource-shutdown flaw; any prevention would require other controls (e.g. code changes or runtime enforcement) configured to act on it

Hardening callouts derived

DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.

  • No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-404, a class-level weakness, and none of its children carries one either.

References