libass: libass is a portable subtitle renderer for the ASS/SSA (Advanced Substation Alpha/Substation Alpha) subtitle format
CVE-2026-61626 is fixed in 2 products on 1 platform, first by libass9 1:0.17.4-2ubuntu0.1~esm1, released July 13, 2026. It is not reported as exploited. Patch Radar priority: Routine.
libass is a portable subtitle renderer for the ASS/SSA (Advanced Substation Alpha/Substation Alpha) subtitle format. From 0.17.4 until 0.17.5, libass event pruning does not guard negative Matroska `ReadOrder` values, allowing an attacker to clear arbitrarily many bits to zero at attacker-controlled positions near the NULL pointer. Exploitation requires a malicious Matroska stream loaded through `ass_process_chunk`, enabled read-order checking, and later pruning of the malicious events. Read-order checking is enabled by default unless `ass_set_check_readorder` is called with zero; pruning must occur explicitly through `ass_prune_events` or through automatic pruning previously enabled with `ass_configure_prune`. On common systems with arithmetic right shift, 32-bit int values, the upper address region reserved to the kernel, and matching binary/kernel architecture, the expected consequence is denial of service. More extensive exploitation on uncommon systems is theoretical and strongly constrained by the target addresses, bit-clearing-only mutation, and ASLR. This issue is fixed in version 0.17.5.
Where it's fixed
| Product | Fixed in | Fix | Released |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | |||
| libass · Debian 14 | 1:0.17.5-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-61626 | Jul 14, 2026 |
| libass9 · Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS (resolute) | 1:0.17.4-2ubuntu0.1~esm1 | libass9 1:0.17.4-2ubuntu0.1~esm1 | Jul 13, 2026 |
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