Resource exhaustion in Pillow - CVE-2026-40192

Vulnerability identifier: #VU125817

CSH Severity: Medium

CVSS v4: 6.9 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]

CVE-ID: CVE-2026-40192

CWE-ID: CWE-400

Exploitation vector: Remote access

Exploit availability: No public exploit available

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause a denial of service.

The vulnerability exists due to uncontrolled resource consumption in the FITS image decoder when parsing a specially crafted GZIP-compressed FITS file. A remote attacker can supply a specially crafted FITS file to cause a denial of service.

The issue can result in unbounded memory consumption, leading to an out-of-memory crash or severe performance degradation.

Pillow
Debian Linux
Anolis OS
openEuler
Fedora
Fusion Content-Aware Storage
Data Cataloging
IBM Fusion HCI
IBM Watson Speech Services Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak for Data
python3-pillow-tk
python3-pillow-qt
python3-pillow-help
python-pillow
python-pillow-debuginfo
python-pillow-debugsource
python3-pillow
python3-pillow-devel
python3-pillow-doc
pillow (Debian package)

Install security update from vendor's website.

Pillow - update to 12.2.0
Fusion Content-Aware Storage - update to 1.1.5
IBM Fusion HCI - update to 2.13.0
IBM Watson Speech Services Cartridge for IBM Cloud Pak for Data - update to 5.3.1 Patch 5
Data Cataloging - update to 2.5.3
python3-pillow-tk - update to 10.3.0-3
python3-pillow-qt - update to 10.3.0-3
python3-pillow-help - update to 10.3.0-3
python-pillow - update to 10.3.0-3
python-pillow-debuginfo - update to 10.3.0-3
python-pillow-debugsource - update to 10.3.0-3
python3-pillow - update to 10.3.0-3
python3-pillow-devel - update to 10.3.0-3
python3-pillow - update to 10.3.0-3
python3-pillow-devel - update to 10.3.0-3
python3-pillow-qt - update to 10.3.0-3
python3-pillow-tk - update to 10.3.0-3
python3-pillow-doc - update to 10.3.0-3
pillow (Debian package) - update to 11.1.0-5+deb13u2
python-pillow - addressed in versions 11.3.0-8.fc43, 12.2.0-1.fc44

• https://github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/security/advisories/GHSA-whj4-6x5x-4v2j
• https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-whj4-6x5x-4v2j

• Multiple vulnerabilities in Pillow
• Fedora 43 update for python-pillow
• Fedora 44 update for python-pillow
• Anolis OS update for python-pillow
• openEuler 24.03 LTS SP3 update for python-pillow
• openEuler 24.03 LTS SP1 update for python-pillow
• openEuler 24.03 LTS update for python-pillow
• Debian update for pillow
• Anolis OS update for python-pillow
• IBM Watson Speech Services Cartridge update for Pillow
• Multiple vulnerabilities in IBM Fusion, IBM Fusion HCI, IBM Fusion Data Cataloging and IBM Fusion Content-Aware Storage