Description
libass is a portable subtitle renderer for the ASS/SSA (Advanced Substation Alpha/Substation Alpha) subtitle format. From 0.17.4 until 0.17.5, libass event pruning does not guard negative Matroska `ReadOrder` values, allowing an attacker to clear arbitrarily many bits to zero at attacker-controlled positions near the NULL pointer. Exploitation requires a malicious Matroska stream loaded through `ass_process_chunk`, enabled read-order checking, and later pruning of the malicious events. Read-order checking is enabled by default unless `ass_set_check_readorder` is called with zero; pruning must occur explicitly through `ass_prune_events` or through automatic pruning previously enabled with `ass_configure_prune`. On common systems with arithmetic right shift, 32-bit int values, the upper address region reserved to the kernel, and matching binary/kernel architecture, the expected consequence is denial of service. More extensive exploitation on uncommon systems is theoretical and strongly constrained by the target addresses, bit-clearing-only mutation, and ASLR. This issue is fixed in version 0.17.5.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| libass | libass | >= 0.17.4, < 0.17.5 | — |
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Debian
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 14 | libass | 1:0.17.5-1 | — |
Ubuntu
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS | libass | 1:0.17.4-2ubuntu0.1~esm1 | USN-8815-1 |
| Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS | libass | 1:0.17.1-2ubuntu0.1~esm1 | USN-8815-1 |
| Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS | libass | 1:0.14.0-2ubuntu0.1~esm1 | USN-8815-1 |
Show 2 more (older releases, extended support, other products)Fewer releases
| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS | libass | 1:0.14.0-1ubuntu0.1~esm1 | USN-8815-1 |
| Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS | libass | 0.10.1-3ubuntu1+esm2 | USN-8815-1 |
Advisories 1
- USN-8815-1 libass vulnerabilities Ubuntu Security Notices (USN) · Nov 3, 2026