CVE-2026-106579 in ImageMagick
Summary
by MITRE • 10/07/2026
ImageMagick is free and open-source software used for editing and manipulating digital images. Prior to 7.1.2-31 and 6.9.13-56, a crafted image can bypass an ImageMagick security policy that uses coder as its domain, potentially allowing data prohibited by the policy to be read. This issue is fixed in versions 7.1.2-31 and 6.9.13-56.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/07/2026
ImageMagick serves as a foundational component in many digital imaging pipelines, providing robust capabilities for creating, editing, composing, and converting bitmap images across various formats. The software is widely deployed in web applications, content management systems, and automated processing workflows where it handles untrusted or semi-trusted image inputs. Security policies within ImageMagick are designed to restrict specific operations based on the coder domain, which dictates what actions can be performed by different image format handlers. These policies act as a critical defense layer against maliciously crafted files that attempt to exploit inherent vulnerabilities in image processing libraries, such as buffer overflows or arbitrary file read/write conditions.
The identified vulnerability represents a significant bypass of these security controls. Specifically, prior to versions 7.1.2-31 and 6.9.13-56, the parsing logic for certain coder domains failed to strictly enforce policy restrictions when processing specially crafted image files. An attacker could construct an image file that exploits this logical flaw in the policy evaluation mechanism. By manipulating specific attributes or metadata within the image structure, it is possible to trick the ImageMagick engine into executing operations that are explicitly prohibited by the configured security policy. This bypass allows for unauthorized access to data that should remain inaccessible under normal operational constraints defined by system administrators.
The primary technical flaw lies in how the application validates coder-specific permissions against incoming file structures. Instead of applying a strict allow-list or deny-list approach consistently across all parsing paths, there exists an edge case where crafted inputs evade detection. This results in a failure to enforce access control restrictions effectively. Consequently, this vulnerability enables potential information disclosure scenarios where sensitive files residing on the server hosting ImageMagick can be read if they fall within the scope of what the bypassed policy would have otherwise blocked. It essentially transforms a controlled image processing tool into an instrument for unauthorized data exfiltration when paired with other exploitation techniques or specific environmental configurations.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability poses a severe risk to environments where ImageMagick processes user-uploaded content without rigorous pre-validation outside of the library itself. Attackers leveraging this flaw could potentially read sensitive configuration files, source code, database credentials, or internal documents located on the same filesystem as long as they can influence which image is processed by vulnerable versions of ImageMagick. This aligns with CWE-200, which classifies information exposure vulnerabilities where an attacker gains access to restricted data. Furthermore, this behavior maps closely to ATT&CK technique T1083, File and Directory Discovery, as the vulnerability facilitates the enumeration and retrieval of files that are not intended for public or application-level consumption.
Mitigation strategies must prioritize immediate software updates to address the root cause within the library codebase. Organizations relying on ImageMagick should upgrade to version 7.1.2-31 or later in the v7 branch, or version 6.9.13-56 or later in the legacy v6 branch as soon as possible. In addition to updating dependencies, administrators should review and harden their ImageMagick policy.xml configuration files. It is advisable to implement strict coder permissions that limit read/write access only to necessary directories using path-based restrictions rather than relying solely on domain-level checks which may have parsing ambiguities. Deploying Web Application Firewalls with deep packet inspection capabilities can also help detect anomalous image processing requests, although this serves as a compensating control rather than a fix for the underlying vulnerability. Regular auditing of third-party dependencies and maintaining an up-to-date inventory of software versions are essential practices to prevent exploitation of such logic flaws in production environments.