CVE-2026-96643
Received
Received - Intake
Pillow Exif Parsing Quadratic CPU Consumption
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-96643, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-21
Last updated on: 2026-10-21
Assigner: GitHub, Inc.
Description
Description
Pillow is a Python imaging library. From 11.0.0 until 13.0.0, Exif.load() in src/PIL/Image.py repeatedly slices the remaining EXIF data while it begins with the six-byte Exif header. src/PIL/PngImagePlugin.py accepts an uncapped PNG eXIf chunk, so a file filled with repeated headers causes a new shrinking copy on every iteration and quadratic CPU work. The condition is reachable through Image.getexif(), Image._getexif(), and ImageOps.exif_transpose(), including common photo-upload rotation workflows. This issue is fixed in version 13.0.0.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| python-pillow | Pillow | >= 11.0.0, < 13.0.0 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-407 | An algorithm in a product has an inefficient worst-case computational complexity that may be detrimental to system performance and can be triggered by an attacker, typically using crafted manipulations that ensure that the worst case is being reached. |
