Electron: Crash in clipboard.readImage() on malformed clipboard image data

Impact

Apps that call clipboard.readImage() may be vulnerable to a denial of service. If the system clipboard contains image data that fails to decode, the resulting null bitmap is passed unchecked to image construction, triggering a controlled abort and crashing the process.

Apps are only affected if they call clipboard.readImage(). Apps that do not read images from the clipboard are not affected. This issue does not allow memory corruption or code execution.

Workarounds

Validate that the clipboard contains image data via clipboard.availableFormats() before calling clipboard.readImage(). Note this only narrows the window — upgrading to a fixed version is recommended.

Fixed Versions

• 42.0.0-alpha.5
• 41.1.0
• 40.8.5
• 39.8.5

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at security@electronjs.org