What is CVE-2017-12944?

CVE-2017-12944 is a high-severity vulnerability in Libtiff, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2017-08-18.

How severe is CVE-2017-12944?

High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.

Resource exhaustion in Libtiff

CVE-2017-12944

The TIFFReadDirEntryArray function in tif_read.c in LibTIFF 4.0.8 mishandles memory allocation for short files, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (allocation failure and application crash) in the TIFFFetchStripThing function in tif_dirread.c during a tiff2pdf invocation.

Published 2017-08-18 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.027 (85.2th percentile), scored 2026-09-30.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 85th percentile — 85.2% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.027 · newest: 0.027 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Libtiff — versions 4.0.8

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-770 — Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

usn.ubuntu.com/3606-1/ (vendor-advisory)
bugzilla.maptools.org/show_bug.cgi (VDB Entry, Third Party Advisory, Issue Tracking)
usn.ubuntu.com/3602-1/ (vendor-advisory)
www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4100 (vendor-advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2017-12944?: CVE-2017-12944 is a high-severity vulnerability in Libtiff, classified under Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2017-08-18.
How severe is CVE-2017-12944?: High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.