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FfmpegApplication

CVE-2009-4634

HIGH · 10.0 CVSS v2.0 Published 2010-02-10
No fix yet
No fix has been published. The vendor has not shipped a fixed release or patch. You remain exposed.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Public exploit Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

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
Multiple integer underflows in FFmpeg 0.5 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service and possibly execute arbitrary code via a crafted file that (1) bypasses a validation check in vorbis_dec.c and triggers a wraparound of the stack pointer, or (2) access a pointer from out-of-bounds memory in mov.c, related to an elst tag that appears before a tag that creates a stream.

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-189

A legacy NVD category grouping numeric mistakes — overflows, truncation, sign errors — where a miscalculated value goes on to drive a dangerous decision such as a memory allocation or a bounds check. It is a bucket rather than one specific bug. Remediation is checked arithmetic and validating any computed size or index before it is used.

General guidance for the numeric 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
FfmpegApplication
Affected:= 0.5

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
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

FFmpeg 0.6 or later (subsequent stable releases contain the fixes)

  1. Upgrade FFmpeg to a version newer than 0.5 that contains the security fix for the integer underflow vulnerabilities
  2. After upgrading, verify the new version is running by executing: ffmpeg -version
  3. Test that your media processing workflows function correctly with the upgraded version
Caveat Newer FFmpeg versions may have changes to codecs, APIs, or command-line options that could require updates to scripts or workflows

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

No vendor fix exists Ffmpeg has not published a patch for this.

There is no version to upgrade to and no patch to apply. Every affected install stays exposed until the vendor ships a fix — or somebody else builds one.

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Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
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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-2009-4634 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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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
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data