Streamlabs Desktop is a free streaming and recording software, built on OBS Studio, for content creators to stream live to platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook. It is designed to be beginner-friendly and offers tools for creating engaging streams, such as customizable overlays, alerts for viewer interactions, and the ability to add guests to a stream.
A vulnerability exists in Streamlabs Desktop where importing a crafted .overlay file can cause uncontrolled CPU consumption, leading to a denial-of-service condition. The .overlay file is an archive containing a config.json configuration. By inserting an excessively large string into the name attribute of a scene object within config.json, the application's renderer process (Frameworks/Streamlabs Desktop Helper (Renderer).app) spikes to over 150% CPU and becomes unresponsive. This forces the victim to terminate the application manually, resulting in loss of availability. An attacker could exploit this by distributing malicious overlay files to disrupt streaming operations.