CVE-2026-112391

Description

A flaw was found in Pillow. The PDF parser fails to limit recursion depth when reading nested PDF data structures such as arrays and dictionaries. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by supplying a specially crafted, deeply nested PDF file to an application processing PDFs in append mode. This causes excessive recursion that crashes or terminates the worker process, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).

Mitigation

--- CME Mitigation Guidance (2026-10-20) ---
Disclaimer: The following mitigation solutions are provided as a courtesy, pending the application of an official patch. This content was generated utilizing AI tools in conjunction with data from https://cmetaxonomy.org. Customers are advised to independently evaluate and test these temporary mitigations within their own infrastructure.

The highest-value action is to enforce recursion depth limits in PdfParser when reading nested PDF data structures during append operations: upgrade to Pillow 13.0.0 (or the fixed Python Pillow/Python3.11 Pillow/Rhoai/Odh Openvino Model Server Rhel/Rhelai3/Bootc Cuda Rhel/Rhelai3/Bootc Gaudi Rhel/Rhelai3/Bootc Rocm Rhel/Rhelai3/Disk Image Cuda Rhel/Python3X Pillow/Rhaiis/Vllm Spyre Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Kserve Storage Initializer Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Kserve Agent Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Kserve Controller Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Kserve Router Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Feature Server Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Trustyai Nemo Guardrails Server Rhel/Rhaiis/Vllm Tpu Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Training Cuda128 Torch29 Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Training Rocm64 Torch29 Py312 Rhel/Rhaiis/Vllm Cpu Rhel/Rhaiis/Vllm Neuron Rhel/Ansible Automation Platform 25/Lightspeed Chatbot Rhel/Openshift Lightspeed/Lightspeed Ocp Rag Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Th06 Cpu Torch291 Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Th06 Cuda130 Torch291 Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Vllm Gaudi Rhel/Python3.12 Pillow/Rhaii/Vllm Gaudi Rhel/Rhaii/Vllm Neuron Rhel/Rhaii/Vllm Tpu Rhel/Lightspeed Core/Lightspeed Stack Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Kserve Autogluon Server Rhel/Rhai Early Access/Docling Sdk Cuda Rhel/Rhai Early Access/Docling Serve Cuda Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Llm D Kv Cache Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Th06 Cpu Torch210 Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Th06 Cuda130 Torch210 Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Th06 Rocm64 Torch291 Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Workbench Jupyter Pytorch Llmcompressor Cuda Py312 Rhel/Ask Sre/Rhel Cla/Rlsapi Rhel/Rhaiis/Model Opt Cuda Rhel/Rhaiis/Vllm Cuda Rhel/Rhaiis/Vllm Rocm Rhel/Rhaii/Model Opt Cuda Rhel/Rhaii/Vllm Cpu Rhel/Rhaii/Vllm Cuda Rhel/Rhaii/Vllm Rocm Rhel/Rhaii/Vllm Spyre Rhel/Ansible Automation Platform/Automation Dashboard Rhel/Ansible Automation Platform 26/Hub Rhel/Ansible Automation Platform 26/Lightspeed Chatbot Rhel/Ansible Automation Platform 27/Hub Rhel/Ansible Automation Platform 27/Lightspeed Chatbot Rhel/Galaxy Ng/Automation Hub Container/Aap Rag Content/Ansible Chatbot Stack/Koku Report Emailer/Exploit Intelligence/Vulnerability Analysis Rhel/Insights Host Inventory/Google Lightspeed Agent/Lscore Deploy/Lightspeed Core/Rag Tool Cpu Rhel/Lightspeed Core/Rag Tool Cuda 12.9 Rhel/Lightspeed Services Ocp/Ocp Rules Rhel/Openshift Lightspeed Tech Preview/Lightspeed Rag Tool Rhel/Openshift Lightspeed/Lightspeed Service Api Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Caikit Tgis Serving Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Llama Stack Core Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Pipeline Runtime Pytorch Llmcompressor Cuda Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Automl Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Autorag Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Mlflow Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Pipeline Runtime Datascience Cpu Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Pipeline Runtime Pytorch Cuda Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Pipeline Runtime Pytorch Rocm Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Pipeline Runtime Tensorflow Cuda Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Pipeline Runtime Tensorflow Rocm Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Trustyai Garak Lls Provider Dsp Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Workbench Codeserver Datascience Cpu Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Workbench Jupyter Datascience Cpu Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Workbench Jupyter Pytorch Cuda Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Workbench Jupyter Pytorch Rocm Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Workbench Jupyter Tensorflow Cuda Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Workbench Jupyter Tensorflow Rocm Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Workbench Jupyter Trustyai Cpu Py312 Rhel/Rhai/Guidellm Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Ogx Core Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Th Torch Cpu Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Th Torch Cuda Py312 Rhel/Rhoai/Odh Th Torch Rocm Py312 Rhel/Quay/Quay Service Tool/Quay/Quay Rhel/Rhelai3/Bootc Aws Cuda Rhel/Rhelai3/Bootc Azure Cuda Rhel/Rhelai3/Bootc Azure Rocm Rhel/Rhelai3/Bootc Gcp Cuda Rhel builds), which set default max_nesting parameter to 900 instead of -1 in get_value() and read_indirect() to enforce recursion limits, closing all 2 injection vectors (deeply nested PDF arrays, deeply nested PDF dictionaries). Until patched, this is a concern on applications using Pillow to append images to existing, untrusted PDF files, so prevent untrusted users from submitting PDF files to applications executing image saves with PDF append enabled. As a compensating measure, configure service watchdogs and automatic restart policies such as systemd WatchdogSec and Restart to restart workers that terminate due to uncaught RecursionError exceptions. These controls limit blast radius and contain exploitation, but they do not fix the underlying unbounded recursion defect — apply the upstream patch to fully remediate.

Highest-impact CME: CME-1204 Service Watchdog and Automatic Restart (systemd WatchdogSec/Restart) (medium)

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score7.5N/AN/A
Attack VectorNetworkN/AN/A
Attack ComplexityLowN/AN/A
Privileges RequiredNoneN/AN/A
User InteractionNoneN/AN/A
ScopeUnchangedN/AN/A
ConfidentialityNoneN/AN/A
Integrity ImpactNoneN/AN/A
Availability ImpactHighN/AN/A

Vector

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

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

CWE-770

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory); DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

When allocating resources without limits, an attacker could prevent other systems, applications, or processes from accessing the same type of resource. It can be easy for an attacker to consume many resources by rapidly making many requests or causing larger resources to be used than is needed.

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