CVE-2016-5140

What is this vulnerability?

CVE-2016-5140 is categorized as a critical Buffer Overflow flaw with a CVSS base score of 9.8. Based on our vulnerability intelligence, this issue occurs when the application fails to securely handle untrusted data boundaries.

Heap-based buffer overflow in the opj_j2k_read_SQcd_SQcc function in j2k.c in OpenJPEG, as used in PDFium in Google Chrome before 52.0.2743.116, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service or possibly have unspecified other impact via crafted JPEG 2000 data.

This architectural defect enables adversaries to bypass intended security controls, directly manipulating the application's execution state or data layer. Immediate strategic intervention is required.

Risk Assessment

Impact on Systems

✅ Remote Code Execution: Attackers can overwrite the instruction pointer to redirect execution to malicious shellcode.

✅ Memory Corruption: Overwriting adjacent memory regions can corrupt critical application state, leading to privilege escalation.

✅ Denial of Service: Triggering segmentation faults results in immediate disruption of critical systems.

How to Fix and Mitigate CVE-2016-5140

1. Apply Vendor Patches: Upgrade affected components to their latest, non-vulnerable versions immediately.
2. Implement Input Validation: Ensure all user-supplied data is validated, sanitized, and type-checked before processing.
3. Deploy Runtime Protection: Use Precogs continuous monitoring to detect exploitation attempts in real time.
4. Audit Dependencies: Review and update all third-party libraries and transitive dependencies.

Defending with Precogs AI

Google Chrome's PDFium library contains a heap-based buffer overflow in the opj_j2k_read_SQcd_SQcc function (JPEG2000 parser). Attackers embed crafted JPEG2000 images in PDF files to execute arbitrary code. Precogs Binary Analysis identifies hazardous arithmetic operations preceding memory allocations.

Use Precogs to continuously scan your codebase, binaries, APIs, and infrastructure for this vulnerability class and related attack patterns. Our AI-powered detection engine combines static analysis with threat intelligence to identify exploitable weaknesses before attackers do.

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Vulnerability Code Signature

Attack Data Flow

Vulnerable Code Pattern

// ❌ VULNERABLE: Memory Buffer Overflow
void process_data(char *input) {
    char buffer[64];
    // Taint sink: copies without bounds checking
    strcpy(buffer, input);
}

Secure Code Pattern

// ✅ SECURE: Bounded copy
void process_data(char *input) {
    char buffer[64];
    // Sanitized boundary check
    strncpy(buffer, input, sizeof(buffer) - 1);
    buffer[sizeof(buffer) - 1] = '\0';
}

How Precogs Detects This

Precogs Binary SAST engine explicitly uncovers memory boundary violations and unsafe memory management functions in compiled binaries.\n