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LinuxOperating system · Gentoo

CVE-2004-0990

HIGH · 10.0 CVSS v2.0 Published 2005-03-01
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Integer overflow in GD Graphics Library libgd 2.0.28 (libgd2), and possibly other versions, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service and possibly execute arbitrary code via PNG image files with large image rows values that lead to a heap-based buffer overflow in the gdImageCreateFromPngCtx function, a different set of vulnerabilities than CVE-2004-0941.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
LinuxOperating system
Affected:all versions
GdlibApplication
Affected:= 1.8.4= 2.0.1= 2.0.15= 2.0.20= 2.0.21= 2.0.22= 2.0.23= 2.0.26= 2.0.27= 2.0.28
OpenpkgApplication
Affected:= 2.1= 2.2= current
Suse LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 8.0= 8.1= 8.2= 9.0= 9.1= 9.2
Secure LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 1.5= 2.0= 2.1= 2.2

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Authentication
None
Confidentiality
Complete
Integrity
Complete
Availability
Complete

AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch www.securityfocus.com →
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

Upgrade to the latest patched libgd version provided by your Linux distribution vendor for this vulnerability (e.g., distribution-specific security updates that address CVE-2004-0990)

  1. Identify the libgd library version currently installed on the system (e.g., dpkg -l libgd2 or rpm -qa gd)
  2. Obtain the patched version of libgd for your distribution from the vendor's security advisory
  3. Upgrade libgd to the patched version using the distribution's package manager (e.g., apt-get update && apt-get install libgd2 for Debian/Ubuntu, or yum update gd for Red Hat-based systems)
  4. Verify the installed version matches the patched version
  5. Restart any services that depend on libgd to ensure the new library is loaded
Caveat This is a security-only upgrade with minimal risk; however, test in staging first as minor API changes between libgd versions may affect applications using the library

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2004-0990 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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