Overview
The recent discovery of a significant vulnerability in InDesign Desktop versions 19.5.3 and earlier has raised alarm in the cybersecurity world. This vulnerability, designated as CVE-2025-43594, is an out-of-bounds write vulnerability that could potentially allow arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. With the widespread use of InDesign Desktop, this vulnerability poses a significant risk to users globally, placing their systems and sensitive data at risk of compromise or leakage.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-43594
Severity: High (7.8 CVSS score)
Attack Vector: Local File
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Impact: System compromise or data leakage upon successful exploit
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
InDesign Desktop | 19.5.3 and earlier
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability, an out-of-bounds write issue, occurs when specially crafted data is processed by an affected version of InDesign Desktop. When a user opens a malicious file, the software fails to properly restrict the boundaries of a buffer, allowing an attacker to write data outside of the allocated memory. This can lead to corruption of adjacent memory and could result in arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user.
Conceptual Example Code
In a conceptual scenario, an attacker might create a malicious InDesign file with embedded code like this:
<Root>
<BufferOverflow>
<Data>malicious_code_here</Data>
</BufferOverflow>
</Root>The ‘malicious_code_here’ represents a harmful payload that will be executed once the file is opened by a user. This could be designed to compromise the system or enable data leakage.
Mitigation Guidance
Users are strongly advised to apply the vendor-supplied patch for this vulnerability as soon as possible. If the patch cannot be applied immediately, consider using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as a temporary mitigation.