gst-plugins-base's RTSP support library (subprojects/gst-plugins-base/gst-libs/gst/rtsp/gstrtspmessage.c) implements gst_rtsp_message_parse_auth_credentials(), used by both gst-rtsp-server (to parse a client's Authorization header, gst-rtsp-server/gst/rtsp-server/rtsp-auth.c:861, default_authenticate()) and by RTSP clients such as gstrtspsrc (gst-plugins-good/gst/rtsp/gstrtspsrc.c:6966) and rtspclientsink (gst-rtsp-sink/gstrtspclientsink.c:2737) to parse a server's WWW-Authenticate header. The internal helper parse_auth_credentials() (gstrtspmessage.c, static function, ~line 1362) tokenizes comma-separated auth-param name=value pairs. For each parameter it computes `item_end = skip_item(header)` (the end of the current token, which points AT the whitespace/comma/NUL character that terminated the token, not past it), then does `value = skip_lws(eq + 1); auth_param->value = g_strndup(value, item_end - value);` (line ~1421-1425). skip_lws() has no awareness of item_end: if the character skip_item() used as the token terminator happens to be whitespace, skip_lws() will step over it (and any further whitespace) looking for a non-space character, potentially advancing `value` past `item_end`. This makes `item_end - value` a negative ptrdiff_t, which is implicitly converted to gsize (an unsigned 64-bit value near G_MAXSIZE) when passed to g_strndup(). Because n+1 (computed inside g_strndup) wraps to 0 on the -1 case, g_new(gchar, 0) resolves to g_malloc(0), which by GLib's documented contract returns NULL; strncpy() is then invoked with this NULL destination and n=G_MAXSIZE, corrupting/crashing, and even where g_strndup does return, the resulting NULL is stored into auth_param->value without a NULL check. Immediately afterward the code does `if (value[0] == '"') decode_quoted_string(auth_param->value);` -- value[0] here is checked on the original (non-NULL) source pointer, so the branch can be taken even though auth_param->value is NULL, and decode_quoted_string() dereferences the NULL pointer, causing SIGSEGV. Reporter (Roy Lau, royworking98) reported this to the GStreamer security contacts on 2026-08-26 (gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer/-/work_items/5278), and the maintainers merged a fix at gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer-security/-/merge_requests/120 on 2026-09-02, targeting the 1.28.7 release. Reporter tested against gstreamer <= 1.28.2; the vulnerable code path is present up to (and reportedly including) versions prior to 1.28.7. Verified independently via static source review against the 1.28.2 tag; dynamic PoC execution was not performed. PSIRT Ticket: PSIRTSUPT-23042 (GST-SA-2026-0082).