CVE-2017-16840 — The VC-2 Video Compression encoder in FFmpeg 3
The VC-2 Video Compression encoder in FFmpeg 3.0 and 3.4 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds read) because of incorrect buffer padding for non-Haar wavelets, related to libavcodec/vc2enc.c and libavcodec/vc2enc_dwt.c.
Published
2017-11-21T08:29:00.210
Last modified
2026-05-13T00:24:29.033
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
01What is this vulnerability?
The VC-2 Video Compression encoder in FFmpeg 3.0 and 3.4 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds read) because of incorrect buffer padding for non-Haar wavelets, related to libavcodec/vc2enc.c and libavcodec/vc2enc_dwt.c.
02Affected products
No structured affected-product list available — see references below for vendor advisories.
03Active exploitation status
Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.
04Recommended remediation
- Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
- Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
- Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.
05Technical details
For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.
06Detection signatures
Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.
07Related CVEs
No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.
08Timeline
- Published: 2017-11-21T08:29:00.210
- Last modified: 2026-05-13T00:24:29.033
09References
- git.videolan.org — http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=a94cb36ab2ad99d3a1331c9f918…
- www.securityfocus.com — http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/101924
- github.com — https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/94e538aebbc9f9c529e8b1f2eda860cfb8c473b1
- www.debian.org — https://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-4049
- git.videolan.org — http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=a94cb36ab2ad99d3a1331c9f918…
- www.securityfocus.com — http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/101924
- github.com — https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/94e538aebbc9f9c529e8b1f2eda860cfb8c473b1
- www.debian.org — https://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-4049
Want this in your SOAR or SIEM?
SARA's API returns EPSS, CVSS, KEV, and an analyst-grade summary in one call.
Read the API reference →