CVE-2026-106570 in ImageMagick
Summary
by MITRE • 10/07/2026
ImageMagick is free and open-source software used for editing and manipulating digital images. Prior to 7.1.2-32, an unauthenticated adjacent-network client can repeatedly connect to the distributed pixel cache server and exhaust its available connections, causing denial of service. This issue is fixed in version 7.1.2-32.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/07/2026
ImageMagick serves as a widely utilized open-source software suite for creating, editing, composing, and converting bitmap images across various formats. A critical security vulnerability was identified within the distributed pixel cache server component of ImageMagick prior to version 7.1.2-32. This specific flaw allows an unauthenticated attacker located on the adjacent network to exploit a resource exhaustion mechanism by repeatedly establishing connections to the service. The architecture of the distributed pixel cache is designed to handle multiple concurrent requests for image processing tasks, but it lacks sufficient controls to limit or validate connection attempts from unknown sources in earlier versions.
The technical nature of this vulnerability centers on an uncontrolled consumption of system resources, specifically network sockets and associated memory structures allocated for each incoming connection. Because the server does not enforce strict authentication or rate-limiting mechanisms before accepting connections, a malicious actor can initiate a high volume of simultaneous TCP handshakes. This behavior effectively saturates the available connection pool maintained by the ImageMagick daemon. As the number of active connections approaches the system limit, legitimate users are unable to establish new sessions for image processing operations. The server becomes unresponsive or may crash entirely due to resource depletion, resulting in a complete denial of service condition for any applications relying on this specific component.
From an operational perspective, the impact is severe for environments where ImageMagick handles high-throughput image manipulation tasks over a networked infrastructure. Since the attack requires only adjacent-network access and no authentication credentials, it represents a low-barrier entry point for disruption. Attackers can leverage automated tools to generate sustained connection floods, rendering critical services that depend on remote pixel caching unavailable. This aligns with common patterns of resource exhaustion attacks where availability is compromised without requiring data exfiltration or code execution privileges.
This vulnerability maps directly to CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write and more specifically CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption, as the flaw lies in the failure to properly manage system resources under load from untrusted inputs. In terms of offensive security frameworks, this behavior is consistent with ATT&CK technique T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service, where an adversary aims to degrade or destroy the availability of computational resources on a target host by exhausting them through repeated requests or resource-intensive operations.
To mitigate this risk, organizations must upgrade ImageMagick to version 7.1.2-32 or later, which includes patches that implement stricter connection handling and authentication requirements for the distributed pixel cache server. Additionally, network segmentation strategies should be employed to restrict access to image processing services only from trusted subnets. Implementing firewall rules that limit the rate of incoming connections can provide an additional layer of defense against such exhaustion attempts until all systems are fully patched. Regular vulnerability scanning and monitoring of connection logs for anomalous spikes in new sessions will also aid in early detection and response to potential exploitation attempts.