Description

Portable Puzzle Collection before 20230116.5782e29 was discovered to contain a buffer overflow which allows attackers to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) via a crafted save file.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "2.9",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-14T04:16:35.440Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-14T04:16:35.440Z",
  "executiveSummary": "The Portable Puzzle Collection prior to version 20230116.5782e29 is susceptible to a buffer overflow vulnerability triggered by maliciously crafted save files.\nThis vulnerability is categorized as a memory corruption flaw, specifically a buffer overflow, which occurs during the parsing of save state data.\nThe primary security impact of this vulnerability is a Denial of Service (DoS), where an attacker can force the application to crash or become unresponsive upon processing the malformed file.\nThe vulnerability affects all users running vulnerable versions of the Portable Puzzle Collection. Exploitation requires the victim to open or load a specially crafted save file provided by an attacker, effectively acting as an injection vector for memory corruption.\nThe risk implication is that the application process terminates unexpectedly, disrupting user operations. As the flaw involves uncontrolled memory access, there is a theoretical potential for memory corruption, though the reported primary impact is localized to system instability.\nNo specific authentication or network privileges are required beyond the ability to deliver the malicious file to the user and induce the application to parse the file content.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability exists within the save file handling routines of the Portable Puzzle Collection, specifically within the logic responsible for deserializing or reading data structures from disk-based save states.\nA buffer overflow occurs when the application fails to perform adequate bounds checking on data stored within the save file before writing that data into a pre-allocated stack or heap buffer.\nWhen the software encounters a crafted save file, an attacker can supply input that exceeds the allocated buffer size. During the parsing process, this overflow overwrites adjacent memory addresses.\nThe root cause is identified as an unsafe memory operation where the internal parser assumes the integrity and size constraints of input data provided in the save file format, leading to an out-of-bounds write.\nAttack flow: 1. The attacker creates a malicious save file containing an oversized data field designed to trigger the overflow. 2. The attacker delivers this file to the target user (e.g., via email, download, or shared storage). 3. The user opens the file using an affected version of the Portable Puzzle Collection. 4. The application reads the malicious structure, exceeding the destination buffer capacity. 5. The resulting memory corruption causes an exception, segmentation fault, or process termination, resulting in a Denial of Service.\nAffected versions include all releases prior to the 20230116.5782e29 build. There are no authentication requirements as the exploit is triggered by the application's native file-parsing functionality.\nPost-exploitation, the immediate impact is a crash; however, depending on the memory architecture and the specific overwrite, such vulnerabilities can occasionally be leveraged to hijack control flow if the overflow is precisely controlled. At a minimum, this represents a reliable method to disrupt the software's execution environment."
}