ImageMagick up to 6.9.13-40/7.1.2-15 PCL Encoder heap-based overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in ImageMagick up to 6.9.13-40/7.1.2-15. It has been rated as critical. Affected by this issue is some unknown functionality of the component PCL Encoder. This manipulation causes heap-based overflow. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-28686. The attack is possible to be carried out remotely. No exploit exists. Upgrading the affected component is advised.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in ImageMagick up to 6.9.13-40/7.1.2-15. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown function of the component PCL Encoder. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a heap-based overflow vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-122. A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc(). As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

ImageMagick is free and open-source software used for editing and manipulating digital images. Prior to versions 7.1.2-16 and 6.9.13-41, A heap-buffer-overflow vulnerability exists in the PCL encode due to an undersized output buffer allocation. This vulnerability is fixed in 7.1.2-16 and 6.9.13-41.

It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-28686 since 03/02/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be launched remotely. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 303080 (Debian dsa-6169 : imagemagick - security update), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 6.9.13-41 or 7.1.2-16 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at CNNVD (CNNVD-202603-1955), Tenable (303080), EUVD (EUVD-2026-10375) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2026-0643). Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Affected

• Debian Linux
• Amazon Linux 2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Ubuntu Linux
• SUSE Linux
• Oracle Linux
• SUSE openSUSE
• Open Source ImageMagick

Productinfo

Type

• Image Processing Software

Name

• ImageMagick

Version

• 6.9.13-40
• 7.1.2-15

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://www.imagemagick.org/

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Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

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