A comprehensive analysis of CVE-2025-50165, a critical Windows vulnerability affecting the Windows Imaging Component (WIC). That could potentially enable remote code execution through specially crafted JPEG files.
However, their findings suggest the real-world exploitation risk is significantly lower than initially feared.
The Vulnerability Details
The flaw stems from dereferencing an uninitialized function pointer during the JPEG compression and re-encoding process, not during image decoding or rendering.
ESET’s root cause analysis revealed that the vulnerability affects explicitly JPEG images with 12-bit or 16-bit color depth.
| Vulnerability Attribute | Details |
|---|---|
| CVE ID | CVE-2025-50165 |
| Affected Component | WindowsCodecs.dll (Windows Imaging Component – WIC) |
| Vulnerability Type | Uninitialized Function Pointer Dereference |
The vulnerability resides in WindowsCodecs.dll, Windows’ primary interface library that handles standard image formats, including JPEG, PNG, GIF, and BMP.
The vulnerable function pointers, compress_data_12 and compress_data_16, remain uninitialized during the compression routine. Creating a crash when these non-standard-precision JPEGs are processed.
Limited Exploitation Scenarios
Contrary to initial assessments suggesting mass exploitation potential, ESET’s investigation indicates exploitation requires several precise conditions.
First, the target application must use a vulnerable version of WindowsCodecs.dll and allow JPEG re-encoding, not just viewing. Simply opening a malicious JPEG file is insufficient to trigger the vulnerability.
The vulnerable code path is triggered only when an application re-encodes a 12-bit or 16-bit JPEG, which can occur during thumbnail creation or manual image-saving operations.
Even then, successful exploitation requires attackers to possess address-leakage information. Significant heap manipulation capabilities are prerequisites that dramatically reduce the feasibility of real-world attacks.
Microsoft released patches addressing the uninitialized function pointers, aligning with fixes previously implemented in libjpeg-turbo version 3.1.1.
The patched versions properly initialize these pointers and implement NULL checks before dereferencing them. Users running WindowsCodecs.dll versions 10.0.26100.0 through 10.0.26100.4945 remain vulnerable.
While CVE-2025-50165 carries a critical severity rating, ESET’s findings validate Microsoft’s assessment that actual exploitability remains unlikely due to the specific preconditions required.
According to Welivesecurity, Organizations should prioritize patching vulnerable systems, particularly those handling untrusted image files.
The research highlights the need to keep third-party libraries updated and to implement effective input validation for image processing operations. The Windows Imaging Component vulnerability can result in remote code execution (RCE) attacks under complex attack scenarios.
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