VideoLAN

VLC Media Player Hit by Two Memory Corruption Flaws Exploitable via Malicious PNG and Rogue RealRTSP Server

Two vulnerabilities have been discovered in the VLC media player that allow out-of-bounds memory access. The issues affect versions from 3.0.0 through 3.0.23. CVE-2026-56711, rated 8.6 on CVSS 4.0, stems from an integer overflow when calculating image buffer sizes in PNG files, enabling attackers to trigger writes beyond allocated memory simply by opening a crafted image or loading it from a playlist. CVE-2026-73324, scored 6.9, resides in the RealRTSP module and permits a malicious server to send an oversized response string that causes reads past the end of a buffer due to a missing null terminator. Both flaws are present in official VideoLAN builds, although some distributions may exclude the RealRTSP component. No special configuration or plugins are required to trigger the issues. Until patched releases appear, users are advised to avoid opening images or playlists from untrusted sources and to refrain from connecting to unknown RealRTSP streams.