Service interruption via unchecked BDF glyph dimensions
Published Jul 6, 2026 · Updated Jul 6, 2026
Resource exhaustion in Pillow before 12.3.0 allows remote attackers to interrupt services by supplying a crafted BDF font. In PIL/BdfFontFile.py, bdf_char() passes attacker-controlled BBX width and height values to Image.new() without invoking the decompression-bomb check. The affected application must load an untrusted BDF font; retained glyph allocations can exhaust process memory and interrupt colocated workloads.
Summary
What happened
Resource exhaustion in Pillow before 12.3.0 allows remote attackers to interrupt services by supplying a crafted BDF font. In PIL/BdfFontFile.py, bdf_char() passes attacker-controlled BBX width and height values to Image.new() without invoking the decompression-bomb check. The affected application must load an untrusted BDF font; retained glyph allocations can exhaust process memory and interrupt colocated workloads.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-55379
- Published
- Jul 6, 2026
- Updated
- Jul 6, 2026
- Vendor
- Pillow
- Product
- Pillow
- Classifications
- CWE-789, T1499.003
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Jul 6, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Jul 6, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=< 12.3.0
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- GHSA-45hq-cxwh-f6vc BDF memory-exhaustion proof of conceptproof of concept · demonstrated
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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