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LinuxOperating system · Conectiva

CVE-2005-3625

HIGH · 10.0 CVSS v2.0 Published 2005-12-31
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Public exploit 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
Xpdf, as used in products such as gpdf, kpdf, pdftohtml, poppler, teTeX, CUPS, libextractor, and others, allows attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) via streams that end prematurely, as demonstrated using the (1) CCITTFaxDecode and (2) DCTDecode streams, aka "Infinite CPU spins."

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
How this class of weakness works · CWE-399

A legacy NVD category grouping weaknesses in how resources — memory, file handles, connections — are allocated, used, and released. It gathers leaks, exhaustion, and lifecycle bugs under one label rather than naming a single flaw. The fix depends on the specific resource issue, generally pairing acquisition with release and bounding what any request can consume.

General guidance for the resource management errors class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

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:= 10.0
Debian LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 3.0= 3.1
LinuxOperating system
Affected:all versions
Enterprise LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 2.1= 3.0= 4.0
Enterprise Linux DesktopOperating system
Affected:= 3.0= 4.0
Fedora CoreOperating system
Affected:= core_1.0= core_2.0= core_3.0= core_4.0
LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 7.3= 9.0
Linux Advanced WorkstationOperating system
Affected:= 2.1

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 lists.suse.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

Upgrade xpdf and related packages (poppler, kpdf, pdftohtml, cups, libextractor, tetex-base) to versions that include the CVE-2005-3625 patch. For RHEL 2.1/3.0/4.0, use RHN updates. For Fedora Core 1-4, use respective updates. For SUSE, use the patches referenced in the January 2006 SUSE security ad

  1. Identify the affected Xpdf-related packages installed on the system (xpdf, poppler, kpdf, pdftohtml, cups, libextractor, tetex-base)
  2. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, apply updates via RHN or yum update xpdf poppler cups
  3. For Fedora Core systems, apply updates via yum or up2date for the respective core version
  4. For Debian systems, apply updates via apt-get update && apt-get upgrade for xpdf-related packages
  5. For SUSE systems, apply updates as referenced in the SUSE security announcement: http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-security-announce/2006-Jan/0001.html
  6. Verify the fix by confirming the packages are updated to versions that include the patch for the infinite loop vulnerability
  7. Restart any services using the affected libraries (CUPS, PDF viewers) after updating
Caveat This is a security fix for a denial of service vulnerability. Minor version updates are expected to be compatible. Some older PDF viewers may need to be replaced with updated versions.

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-2005-3625 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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What belongs here
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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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