CVE-2019-9718 Denial of service in n/a
Attackers can cause denial of service via CPU exhaustion using crafted Matroska files due to inefficient parsing in the subtitle decoder.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2019-9718?
CVE-2019-9718 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Canonical Ubuntu Linux, published on 12 Mar 2019. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Official description
In FFmpeg 3.2 and 4.1, a denial of service in the subtitle decoder allows attackers to hog the CPU via a crafted video file in Matroska format, because ff_htmlmarkup_to_ass in libavcodec/htmlsubtitles.c has a complex format argument to sscanf.
Weakness: CWE-125
Which versions are affected by CVE-2019-9718?
It affects 3 products.
Products include Canonical Ubuntu Linux, Debian Debian Linux, Ffmpeg Ffmpeg.
How do I fix CVE-2019-9718?
Upgrade to a fixed version.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2019-9718 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2019-9718 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Canonical Ubuntu Linux
Sources
Also known as CLEANSTART-2024-AW88517, DEBIAN-CVE-2019-9718, GHSA-423p-f8g4-wmpc, JLSEC-2025-102, UBUNTU-CVE-2019-9718.