Description

Substance3D - Designer is affected by a NULL Pointer Dereference vulnerability that could result in an application denial-of-service. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to crash the application, leading to a denial-of-service condition. Exploitation of this issue requires user interaction in that a victim must open a malicious file.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "5.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-08-25T18:17:54.783Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-08-25T18:17:54.783Z",
  "executiveSummary": "Substance3D Designer is susceptible to a NULL pointer dereference vulnerability, classified as a memory safety issue that results in an application-level denial-of-service (DoS).\nThe vulnerability occurs when the application improperly handles malicious input, specifically within the processing of crafted files.\nSuccessful exploitation forces an unhandled exception, causing the application process to terminate abruptly, thereby disrupting service availability.\nThe impact is limited to a denial-of-service; however, it renders the application unusable and may cause unsaved data loss for the victim.\nExploitation requires specific user interaction, necessitating that a victim manually opens a malicious, attacker-supplied file within the Substance3D Designer environment.\nThis vulnerability does not inherently provide an attacker with remote code execution capabilities or unauthorized system access, but it effectively compromises the operational integrity of the software.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability is a failure in the input validation or memory management logic within Substance3D Designer when parsing malicious file structures.\nA NULL pointer dereference occurs when the application attempts to access a memory address designated as NULL (0x0). This typically happens during file parsing if a pointer, intended to reference a structure or data buffer from the file, is not properly initialized or validated against nullity before being dereferenced.\nWhen the software encounters a malformed or specifically crafted file, the internal logic may fail to instantiate a necessary object or map a required memory segment. If the subsequent execution path proceeds to invoke methods or access members via the null pointer, the underlying operating system or runtime environment triggers an access violation, leading to an immediate process crash.\nThe attack flow begins with the creation of a malicious payload, which is a crafted file designed to trigger the specific parsing logic failure. An attacker must distribute this file to the target user through standard delivery mechanisms such as email attachments, file sharing services, or compromised external storage media.\nExploitation is predicated on the victim opening this malicious file within Substance3D Designer. No authentication or elevated privileges are required for the exploit to occur, as the crash happens within the context of the user's session.\nThe network exposure is considered minimal, as the exploit is locally triggered upon file consumption, though it can be weaponized in environments where untrusted project files or assets are shared. Post-exploitation, the primary impact is service interruption; the application must be restarted, and any active tasks or operations interrupted by the crash are terminated. There is no evidence currently suggesting that this pointer dereference can be leveraged for code injection, as the control flow is interrupted by the segmentation fault before further execution occurs."
}