CVE-2020-35655

What is this vulnerability?

CVE-2020-35655 is categorized as a critical Buffer Overflow flaw. Based on our vulnerability intelligence, this issue occurs when the application fails to securely handle untrusted data boundaries.

In Pillow before 8.1.0, SGIRleDecode has a 4-byte buffer over-read when decoding crafted SGI RLE image files because offsets and length tables are mishandl.

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 (EIP/RIP) to redirect execution to malicious shellcode.

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

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

How to fix this issue?

Implement the following strategic mitigations immediately to eliminate the attack surface.

1. Memory-Safe Languages Where possible, migrate critical parsing logic to memory-safe languages like Rust or Go.

2. Safe Standard Libraries Replace unbounded C functions (strcpy, sprintf) with boundary-checking equivalents (strncpy, snprintf).

3. Compiler Defenses Ensure software is compiled with modern defensive flags: ASLR, DEP/NX, Stack Canaries (SSP), and Position Independent Executables (PIE).

Vulnerability Signature

// Vulnerable C Function
void parse_network_packet(char *untrusted_data) \{
    char local_buffer[128];
    // VULNERABLE: strcpy does not verify the length of the source data
    strcpy(local_buffer, untrusted_data);
    printf("Packet Processed.");
\}

// EXPLOIT PAYLOAD: 128 bytes of padding + [Overwrite EIP Address]

References and Sources

• NVD — CVE-2020-35655
• MITRE — CVE-2020-35655
• Binary Analysis Vulnerabilities
• OSV.dev Database