CVE-2025-70968
Published: 14 January 2026
Summary
CVE-2025-70968 is a critical-severity Use After Free (CWE-416) vulnerability in Freeimage Project Freeimage. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 35.9th 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 are NIST 800-53 SI-16 (Memory Protection) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2025-70968 is a Use After Free vulnerability (CWE-416) affecting FreeImage version 3.18.0, located in the PluginTARGA.cpp file within the loadRLE() function. Published on 2026-01-14, it carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), marking it as critical due to its potential for severe impact.
A remote network attacker requires no privileges or user interaction to exploit this flaw. Successful exploitation can result in high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts, enabling outcomes such as arbitrary code execution, data corruption, or denial of service on affected systems processing Targa images via FreeImage.
A reference implementation demonstrating the issue is available at https://github.com/MiracleWolf/FreeimageCrash/tree/main, which focuses on crash reproduction for the vulnerability. No specific patches or mitigation guidance from advisories is detailed in available information.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-2456
Vulnerability details
FreeImage 3.18.0 contains a Use After Free in PluginTARGA.cpp;loadRLE().
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
UAF in image library enables unauthenticated remote code execution when processing crafted Targa files over network (AV:N, UI:N), directly mapping to exploitation of public-facing applications that ingest images.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Flaw remediation directly addresses the Use After Free vulnerability in FreeImage by identifying, reporting, and patching the specific flaw in PluginTARGA.cpp loadRLE().
Memory protection safeguards prevent unauthorized code execution from Use After Free flaws like this one in image processing by employing techniques such as ASLR and DEP.
Vulnerability scanning detects the presence of vulnerable FreeImage 3.18.0 versions, enabling proactive remediation before exploitation.