CVE-2020-35538

A vulnerability was found in libjpeg-turbo where a segmentation fault occurs due to a NULL pointer passing to jcopy_sample_rows(). You may see this error statement: "Corrupt JPEG data: premature end of data segment". When processed by a libjpeg-turbo, a crafted input file could cause a crash, leading to a denial of service.

This vulnerability is considered low severity rather than moderate because it primarily results in a denial of service (DoS) through a crash, without posing a direct risk of code execution or information disclosure. The issue arises due to a NULL pointer dereference when processing a malformed JPEG file, which leads to a segmentation fault but does not introduce memory corruption or arbitrary code execution risks. Additionally, most applications using libjpeg-turbo process images in a non-privileged context, meaning a crash does not compromise system security beyond affecting availability. Since the exploitation requires user interaction (i.e., opening a crafted JPEG), and modern systems can handle such crashes gracefully (e.g., automatic process restart mechanisms), the overall impact remains low.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.