CVE-2026-109261
Received Received - Intake

Memory Leak in ImageMagick GIF Encoder

Publication date: 2026-10-12

Last updated on: 2026-10-12

Assigner: VulnCheck

Description
ImageMagick before 6.9.13-57 and 7.x before 7.1.2-32 contains a memory leak in the GIF encoder because allocated memory is not released when color quantization fails during encoding. Attackers can supply images whose GIF conversion causes quantization to fail, leaking memory with each attempt and degrading availability.

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Meta Information

Published
2026-10-12
Last Modified
2026-10-12
Generated
2026-10-12
AI Q&A
2026-10-12
EPSS Evaluated
N/A
NVD
CVE-2026-109261
EUVD
EUVD-2026-97705

Affected Vendors & Products

Showing 2 associated CPEs
Vendor Product Version / Range
ImageMagick ImageMagick 7.0.0-0
ImageMagick ImageMagick 0

Helpful Resources

Exploitability

CWE
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KEV
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CWE ID Description
CWE-401 The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

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Executive Summary

This vulnerability is a memory leak in ImageMagick's GIF encoder. When converting images to GIF format, if color quantization fails due to memory constraints, the software does not release allocated memory properly. Attackers can exploit this by repeatedly providing images that trigger this failure, causing progressive memory leaks that degrade system availability.

Detection Guidance

To detect this vulnerability, check the installed version of ImageMagick using the command: convert --version or identify --version. If the version is below 6.9.13-57 or 7.1.2-32, the system is vulnerable. Monitor memory usage during GIF processing tasks for unexpected increases.

Impact Analysis

The primary impact is reduced system availability due to memory exhaustion. An attacker could repeatedly trigger the vulnerability, causing the system to run out of memory and potentially crash or slow down significantly. This affects services relying on ImageMagick for image processing.

Mitigation Strategies

Immediately update ImageMagick to version 6.9.13-57 or later for the 6.x branch, or 7.1.2-32 or later for the 7.x branch. If updating is not possible, restrict access to ImageMagick processing functions or disable GIF encoding capabilities until patched.

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