Pillow: NULL pointer dereference in Image.merge via an unvalidated band 0
CVE-2026-112405 · GHSA-cp9v-662q-vvx9 · published 21 Oct 2026
How serious is it
- Severity: high, CVSS score 8.7 out of 10.
- No exploit prediction (EPSS) score yet.
- Not on the CISA list of exploited vulnerabilities.
- No public exploit in Exploit-DB.
Is your app affected by CVE-2026-112405?
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Who is affected
pillow(PyPI) >= 12.0.0, < 13.0.0
How to check
- Run
pip show pillowin your project to see the installed version, including copies pulled in by other packages. - Or paste your lockfile into the checker: it lists every package with a known vulnerability, this one included.
- Or run
npx shippable-dev scan localhost:3000in your project folder. It reads your lockfile and flags this vulnerability along with every other known one.
How to fix
Copies a prompt for Claude Code, Cursor or Codex: it checks your lockfiles for this and upgrades it.
- Upgrade
pillowto 13.0.0 or later, commit the lockfile and redeploy. - If a vulnerable version was live, check your logs and rotate the secrets that server could read.
The advisory
### Summary
`Image.merge()` checks the mode of every input band except band 0. If band 0 is a single-band `I` or `F` image, the native merge routine reads a pixel pointer that is NULL for those modes and the process crashes. The IPTC plugin reaches this from a plain `Image.open()` followed by a load, and IPTC has no magic-byte prefilter, so a crafted file with no recognizable header can drive it.
### Details
The validation loop skips band 0:
- `src/PIL/Image.py:3795` iterates `for band in bands[1:]` and checks mode and size only for those.
For an `I` or `F` image the 8-bit plane `image8` is NULL (only `image32` is set). `ImagingMerge` dereferences `bands[0]->image8[y]` for the multi-band output modes:
- `src/libImaging/Bands.c:302`, `:311`, `:321`
The IPTC loader builds the band list from an attacker-typed sub-image and passes it to merge with the sub-image at index 0:
- `src/PIL/IptcImagePlugin.py:156-160`
- `src/PIL/IptcImagePlugin.py:169` registers the opener with no accept function.
### PoC
```python
from PIL import Image
# Band 0 is a single-band "I" image: its image8 plane is NULL. merge() validates only
# bands[1:], so the native ImagingMerge dereferences the NULL plane for band 0.
band0 = Image.new("I", (4, 4))
Image.merge("RGB", [band0, Image.new("L", (4, 4)), Image.new("L", (4, 4))])
```
Run it:
```
$ python 02_poc.py
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
```
Observed on a source build of commit `3e2ab96`.
Under AddressSanitizer:
```
==ERROR: AddressSanitizer: SEGV on unknown address 0x000000000000
#0 ImagingMerge src/libImaging/Bands.c:311
#1 _merge src/_imaging.c:2492
SUMMARY: AddressSanitizer: SEGV src/libImaging/Bands.c:311 in ImagingMerge
```
The null address confirms the dereference of the missing `image8` plane for band 0.
### Impact
NULL pointer dereference in a C extension. A crafted file opened and loaded through the IPTC path crashes the worker process. This is a hard crash, not a Python exception an application can catch.
Check your whole app
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References
- github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/security/advisories/GHSA-cp9v-662q-vvx9
- nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-112405
- github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/commit/b6ee66e8b2c2c0932bdf65f963268d9f2927ef86
- github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/releases/tag/13.0.0
- github.com/advisories/GHSA-cp9v-662q-vvx9
- github.com/python-pillow/Pillow
Merged from GitHub Advisory Database, OSV. Last updated 25 Oct 2026. All vulnerabilities · RSS · JSON