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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2021-3479 json

There's a flaw in OpenEXR's Scanline API functionality in versions before 3.0.0-beta.

published 2021-03-31 5 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-26801

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.0%
EPSS 1.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 61%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

There's a flaw in OpenEXR's Scanline API functionality in versions before 3.0.0-beta. An attacker who is able to submit a crafted file to be processed by OpenEXR could trigger excessive consumption of memory, resulting in an impact to system availability.

Patch / fix

  • openexr openexr 2.4.3, 2.5.4
  • openexr Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.5.4-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-3479

  • openexr Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 2.2.0-10ubuntu2.6
  • openexr Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 2.2.0-11.1ubuntu1.6
  • openexr Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 2.3.0-6ubuntu0.5

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-3479

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • openexr SLES for SAP 12 SP5, SLES for SAP 12 SP4, SLES for SAP 12 SP3 +12 more 2.1.0-6.34.1
  • OpenEXR SLES 11 SP4-LTSS, SLE Point of Sale 11 SP3 1.6.1-83.17.25.1
  • openexr SLE Module for Desktop Applications 15 SP3, SLE Module for Desktop Applications 15 SP2 2.2.1-3.27.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2021:2159-1SUSE-SU-2021:14757-1SUSE-SU-2021:1489-1

  • openexr openSUSE Leap 15.2 2.2.1-lp152.7.14.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2021:0670-1

  • openexr Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +9 more 2.5.4-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2021-3479

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • openexr Arch Linux 2.5.4-1

arch linux advisories AVG-1746

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-3479 updated cvss 6.2

OpenEXR: Out-of-memory caused by allocation of a very large buffer

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 OpenEXR, OpenEXR-libs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 OpenEXR, OpenEXR-libs
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 OpenEXR, OpenEXR-libs
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.96% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 61% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Affected products

  • n/a OpenEXR

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.