CVE-2026-107208 in ImageMagick
Summary
by MITRE • 10/07/2026
ImageMagick is free and open-source software used for editing and manipulating digital images. Prior to 7.1.2-30 and 6.9.13-55, a crafted XMP profile can reach a recursion limit that is handled as a fatal condition instead of an ordinary exception, terminating the image-processing process. This issue is fixed in versions 7.1.2-30 and 6.9.13-55.
If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/07/2026
ImageMagick serves as a foundational toolset for digital image processing across numerous software ecosystems, including web applications, content management systems, and automated media pipelines. The vulnerability identified in versions prior to 7.1.2-30 and 6.9.13-55 centers on the handling of Extensible Metadata Platform profiles embedded within image files. XMP metadata is widely used to store descriptive information about digital assets, such as copyright details, creation dates, and editing history. While this functionality enhances asset management, it also introduces a complex parsing surface that must be rigorously validated against malformed or maliciously crafted inputs.
The core technical flaw lies in the recursion handling mechanism within the XMP profile parser. When ImageMagick processes an image containing a specially constructed XMP profile, it encounters deeply nested structures that trigger recursive function calls to resolve metadata references. In earlier versions of the software, this recursion was not adequately bounded or managed with appropriate exception handling protocols. Instead of catching the resulting stack overflow as a recoverable error condition, the system treated the exceeded recursion limit as an unrecoverable fatal fault. This design choice causes the image-processing daemon or application to terminate abruptly rather than gracefully rejecting the malformed input and continuing operation.
From a security operations perspective, this behavior translates directly into a denial of service vulnerability. An attacker can exploit this flaw by uploading or providing access to a maliciously crafted image file containing an XMP profile with excessive nesting depth. Upon processing, the application will crash due to the unhandled fatal exception associated with the recursion limit. In environments where ImageMagick is used as part of a web server pipeline, such as through PHP's Imagick extension or Node.js bindings, this can lead to service disruption for all users relying on that specific process instance. The impact is particularly severe in high-throughput environments where image processing occurs automatically upon upload, allowing remote attackers to cause persistent outages without requiring authentication if the input vector is accessible.
This vulnerability aligns with Common Weakness Enumeration CWE-787, which addresses out-of-bounds write scenarios often associated with buffer overflows or stack corruption resulting from uncontrolled recursion, and more broadly fits within CWE-20 for improper input validation. In terms of attack patterns, this behavior corresponds to the ATT&CK technique T1496, Resource Hijacking, specifically under the sub-category of Denial of Service via resource exhaustion. The attacker leverages computational resources or process stability limits to degrade service availability rather than gaining unauthorized access to data or system control.
Mitigation strategies primarily involve upgrading ImageMagick to version 7.1.2-30 or later for the major branch, or version 6.9.13-55 and above for legacy systems. These releases implement proper exception handling that catches recursion limit violations as ordinary errors, allowing the application to log the issue and continue processing subsequent requests without crashing. For organizations unable to immediately patch their infrastructure, temporary mitigations include implementing strict input validation at the network perimeter or within the application layer to reject image files with excessively large metadata sections before they reach the ImageMagick engine. Additionally, deploying rate limiting on upload endpoints can reduce the blast radius of potential exploitation attempts by slowing down automated attacks that rely on rapid-fire requests to maintain service disruption.