VulnerabilityPublished 22 Oct 2026Updated 29 Oct 2026

CVE-2026-112396: Pillow · Heap use-after-free when encoding TIFF to an in-memory buffer

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Authoritative record:CVE-2026-112396· Medium 5.9

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.9 Medium.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 07:30 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.9Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: High
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: High: A successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected. For example, a successful attack may require an attacker to: gather knowledge about the environment in which the vulnerable target/component exists; prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability; or inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim in order to read and/or modify network communications (e.g., a man in the middle attack).
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 19 Oct 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 29 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Homebrewaider`pkg:brew/aider`Other threats	Affected >=0.86.1_1	Fixed in–

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Description

### Summary Saving an image as TIFF to an in-memory buffer can trigger a heap use-after-free if libtiff rejects a tag at encode time. When `TIFFWriteScanline` fails, the encoder frees its output buffer but leaves the libtiff handle open. Later, when the encoder object is torn down, `TIFFClose` flushes buffered bytes through the write callback and writes into the freed buffer. An application that re-encodes attacker-influenced images to TIFF in memory can be crashed and is a candidate for remote code execution. ### Details The failure path in `ImagingLibTiffEncode` frees `clientstate->data` for the in-memory case but does not close the TIFF or null `clientstate->tiff` (the file-descriptor branch just above it does set `tiff = NULL`): - `src/libImaging/TiffDecode.c:1041-1046` Teardown then calls `ImagingLibTiffEncodeCleanup`, which runs `TIFFClose(tiff)` because `tiff` is still set: - `src/encode.c:99-101` - `src/libImaging/TiffDecode.c:955` `TIFFClose` flushes through `_tiffWriteProc`, which reallocs and memcpys into the freed `state->data`: - `src/libImaging/TiffDecode.c:103-115` The Predictor tag is a convenient trigger: the floating-point predictor (value 3) is invalid for integer sample data, so libtiff aborts the write. ### PoC ```python import io from PIL import Image # In-memory TIFF re-encode. libtiff rejects Predictor=3 (floating point) on integer # data, so TIFFWriteScanline fails. The encoder frees clientstate->data but leaves the # TIFF open; cleanup's TIFFClose then writes through the callback into the freed buffer. im = Image.new("L", (64, 64)) buf = io.BytesIO() im.save(buf, format="TIFF", compression="tiff_lzw", tiffinfo={317: 3}) # 317 = Predictor ``` Run it: ``` $ python 01_poc.py PredictorSetup: Floating point "Predictor" not supported with 1 data format. OSError: encoder error -2 when writing image file Segmentation fault (core dumped) ``` Observed on a source build of commit `3e2ab96` with libtiff. The process aborts during cleanup after the encoder error. Depending on heap state the same run sometimes reports `corrupted double-linked list` instead of a segfault; both are the same write into freed memory. Under AddressSanitizer (build with `-fsanitize=address`), relevant frames: ``` ==ERROR: AddressSanitizer: heap-use-after-free on address 0x7ef737b48804 WRITE of size 4 at 0x7ef737b48804 thread T0 #1 _tiffWriteProc src/libImaging/TiffDecode.c:115 #3 TIFFFlush libtiff.so.6 #5 TIFFClose libtiff.so.6 #6 ImagingLibTiffEncodeCleanup src/libImaging/TiffDecode.c:955 #7 _dealloc src/encode.c:100 freed by thread T0 here: #1 ImagingLibTiffEncode src/libImaging/TiffDecode.c:1045 #2 _encode src/encode.c:139 previously allocated by thread T0 here: #1 ImagingLibTiffEncodeInit src/libImaging/TiffDecode.c:863 #2 PyImaging_LibTiffEncoderNew src/encode.c:757 SUMMARY: AddressSanitizer: heap-use-after-free src/libImaging/TiffDecode.c:115 in _tiffWriteProc ``` The buffer allocated in `ImagingLibTiffEncodeInit` is freed in `ImagingLibTiffEncode`, then written by `_tiffWriteProc` during the `TIFFClose` flush that runs from the encoder's `_dealloc`. ### Impact Use-after-free in a C extension. Affects any service that converts or thumbnails untrusted images to TIFF in memory (a `BytesIO` or other non-seekable target). Result is a crash and possible memory corruption leading to code execution.

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