GHSA-24p2-j2jr-386w psd-tools: Compression module has unguarded zlib decompression, missing dimension validation, and hardening gaps
SummaryA security review of the `psd_tools.compression` module (conducted against the `fix/invalid-rle-compression` branch, commits `7490ffa`–`2a006f5`) identified the following pre-existing issues. The two findings introduced and **fixed** by those commits (Cython buffer overflow, `IndexError` on lone repeat header) are excluded from this report.Findings1. Unguarded `zlib.decompress` — ZIP bomb / memory exhaustion (Medium)**Location**: `src/psd_tools/compression/__init__.py`, lines 159 and 162`zlib.decompress` is called without a `max_length` cap. A crafted PSD file containing a ZIP-compressed channel whose compressed payload expands to gigabytes would exhaust process memory before any limit is enforced. The RLE path is not vulnerable to this because the decoder pre-allocates exactly `row_size × height` bytes; the ZIP path has no equivalent ceiling.**Impact**: Denial-of-service / OOM crash when processing untrusted PSD files.**Suggested mitigation**: Pass a reasonable `max_length` to `zlib.decompress`, derived from the expected `width * height * depth // 8` byte count already computed in `decompress()`.2. No upper-bound validation on image dimensions before allocation (Low)**Location**: `src/psd_tools/compression/__init__.py`, lines 138 and 193Neither `width`, `height`, nor `depth` are range-checked before these values drive memory allocation. The PSD format (version 2 / PSB) permits dimensions up to 300,000 × 300,000 pixels; a 4-channel 32-bit image at that size would require ~144 TB to hold. While the OS/Python allocator will reject such a request, there is no early, explicit guard that produces a clean, user-facing error.**Impact**: Uncontrolled allocation attempt from a malformed or adversarially crafted PSB file; hard crash rather than a recoverable error.**Suggested mitigation**: Validate `width`, `height`, and `depth` against known PSD/PSB limits before entering decompression, and raise a descriptive `ValueError` early.3. `assert` used as a runtime integrity check (Low)**Location**: `src/psd_tools/compression/__init__.py`, line 170This assertion can be silently disabled by running the interpreter with `-O` (or `-OO`), which strips all `assert` statements. If the assertion ever becomes relevant (e.g., after future refactoring), disabling it would allow a length mismatch to propagate silently into downstream image compositing.**Impact**: Loss of an integrity guard in optimised deployments.**Suggested mitigation**: Replace with an explicit `if` + `raise ValueError(...)`.4. `cdef int` indices vs. `Py_ssize_t size` type mismatch in Cython decoder (Low)**Location**: `src/psd_tools/compression/_rle.pyx`, lines 18–20All loop indices are C `signed int` (32-bit). The `size` parameter is `Py_ssize_t` (64-bit on modern platforms). The comparison `j < size` promotes `j` to `Py_ssize_t`, but if `j` wraps due to a row size exceeding `INT_MAX` (~2.1 GB), the resulting comparison is undefined behaviour in C. In practice, row sizes are bounded by PSD/PSB dimension limits and are unreachable at this scale; however, the mismatch is a latent defect if the function is ever called directly with large synthetic inputs.**Impact**: Theoretical infinite loop or UB at >2 GB row sizes; not reachable from standard PSD/PSB parsing.**Suggested mitigation**: Change `cdef int i`, `j`, `length` to `cdef Py_ssize_t`.5. Silent data degradation not surfaced to callers (Informational)**Location**: `src/psd_tools/compression/__init__.py`, lines 144–157The tolerant RLE decoder (introduced in `2a006f5`) replaces malformed channel data with zero-padded (black) pixels and emits a `logger.warning`. This is the correct trade-off over crashing, but the warning is only observable if the caller has configured a log handler. The public `PSDImage` API does not surface channel-level decode failures to the user in any other way.**Impact**: A user parsing a silently corrupt file gets a visually wrong image with no programmatic signal to check.**Suggested mitigation**: Consider exposing a per-channel decode-error flag or raising a distinct warning category that users can filter or escalate via the `warnings` module.6. `encode()` zero-length return type inconsistency in Cython (Informational)**Location**: `src/psd_tools/compression/_rle.pyx`, lines 66–67All other return paths return an explicit `cdef string result`. This path returns `data` (a `const unsigned char[:]` memoryview) and relies on Cython's implicit coercion to `bytes`. It is functionally equivalent today but is semantically inconsistent and fragile if Cython's coercion rules change in a future version.**Impact**: Potential silent breakage in future Cython versions; not a current security issue.**Suggested mitigation**: Replace `return data` with `return result` (the already-declared empty `string`).EnvironmentBranch: `fix/invalid-rle-compression`Reviewed commits: `7490ffa`, `2a006f5`Python: 3.x (Cython extension compiled for CPython)
CVSS v4.0 score: 6.8