CVE-2026-96640

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

HIGH 8.2

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.58 % · percentile 48 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
GitHub_M
NVD status
Analyzed

Description

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.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-400 — Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • CWE-407 — Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 4.0HIGH 8.2CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:NGitHub_M
CVSS 4.0HIGH 8.2CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XNVD · security-advisories@github.com (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HNVD · nvd@nist.gov (Primary)

Advisories

European references

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
python-pillow · Pillowaffected >= 5.1.0, < 13.0.0

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD