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CVE-2026-96640GHSA-MRFP-P49P-3HF2

Pillow PDF append accepts malformed shared page-tree DAG causing resource exhaustion

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
Fix
Fixed in 13.0.0
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
  • Exploitation: poc
  • Automatable: yes
  • Technical impact: partial

Summary

Pillow is a Python imaging library. From 5.1.0 until 13.0.0, PdfParser.linearize_page_tree() in src/PIL/PdfParser.py treats a PDF /Pages graph as a tree without tracking duplicate indirect references. When Image.save(..., format="PDF", append=True) processes an attacker-controlled existing PDF whose /Kids arrays repeatedly reference the same child /Pages node, Pillow expands the shared subtree as distinct pages. A compact malformed PDF can therefore create exponentially many page references and consume disproportionate CPU before the append completes. This issue is fixed in version 13.0.0.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. First seen by cve.now
  3. CISA SSVC assessment

    Exploitation: poc · Automatable: yes · Technical impact: partial

  4. Record last updated

Affected versions

  • python-pillow Pillow

    From 5.1.0 · fixed in 13.0.0

  • pillowPyPI

    From 5.1.0 · fixed in 13.0.0

References 4

GitHub · python-pillow/Pillow