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Fencer Intel
medium 6.5

CVE-2026-96638 json

Pillow: BMP RLE decoder memory-amplification DoS via unbounded delta escape / absolute mode

published 25d ago modified 13d ago also BIT-pillow-2026-96638 , EUVD-2026-107559 , GHSA-24rc-8hj2-v98c

cvss
6.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 28%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Pillow is a Python imaging library. From 9.1.0 until 13.0.0, BmpRleDecoder.decode() in src/PIL/BmpImagePlugin.py permits crafted RLE BMP delta escapes and absolute-mode runs to append beyond the remaining dest_length without a per-branch cap. A delta can add roughly 255 image rows in one iteration, so a kilobyte-sized file with a large but permitted width can expand the data bytearray to hundreds of megabytes or more, causing memory-exhaustion denial of service. This issue is fixed in version 13.0.0.

Patch / fix

  • pypi pillow 13.0.0
  • bitnami pillow 13.0.0
  • python pillow 13.0.0
  • python-Pillow openSUSE Leap 16.0 11.3.0-160000.9.1
  • python-Pillow openSUSE Tumbleweed 13.0.0-2.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:22246-1openSUSE-SU-2026:12251-1

Is CVE-2026-96638 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-96638 updated cvss 6.5

pillow: pillow: Denial of Service via crafted RLE BMP image

  • Red Hat Exploit Intelligence exploit-intelligence/vulnerability-analysis-rhel9
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Lightspeed Core lightspeed-core/rag-tool-cpu-rhel9, lightspeed-core/lightspeed-stack-rhel9, lightspeed-core/rag-tool-cuda-12.9-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed openshift-lightspeed/lightspeed-ocp-rag-rhel9, openshift-lightspeed/lightspeed-service-api-rhel9, openshift-lightspeed-tech-preview/lightspeed-rag-tool-rhel9 Red Hat AI Inference Server rhaii/vllm-tpu-rhel9, rhaiis/vllm-cpu-rhel9, rhaiis/vllm-tpu-rhel9, rhaiis/vllm-cuda-rhel9, rhaiis/vllm-rocm-rhel9, rhaii/vllm-neuron-rhel9, +3 more
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 python-pillow 10.3.0-1.el9ap, python3x-pillow 10.3.0-1.el8ap, python3.11-pillow 10.3.0-1.el8ap, python3.12-pillow 12.3.0-1.el9ap, ansible-automation-platform-26/hub-rhel9, ansible-automation-platform-27/hub-rhel9, +4 more
    affected: no fix available, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 python3-pillow, python3-pillow-tk, python-pillow 10.3.0-1.el9ap Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI (RHEL AI) 3 rhelai3/bootc-cuda-rhel9, rhelai3/bootc-rocm-rhel9, rhelai3/bootc-gaudi-rhel9, rhelai3/bootc-aws-cuda-rhel9, rhelai3/bootc-gcp-cuda-rhel9, rhelai3/disk-image-cuda-rhel9, +2 more Red Hat Lightspeed Services for OCP lightspeed-services-ocp/ocp-rules-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhai/guidellm-rhel9, rhoai/odh-automl-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mlflow-rhel9, rhoai/odh-autorag-rhel9, rhoai/odh-ogx-core-rhel9, rhoai/odh-vllm-gaudi-rhel9, +38 more
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Quay 3 quay/quay-rhel8, quay/quay-rhel9
    affected: no fix available, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Satellite 6 python-pillow 10.3.0-1.el9ap, python3.12-pillow 12.3.0-1.el9ap
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat AI Inference Server 3.5 rhaii/vllm-cpu-rhel9 1793444554, rhaii/vllm-cuda-rhel9 1793444600, rhaii/vllm-rocm-rhel9 1793444456, rhaii/vllm-gaudi-rhel9 1793444510, rhaii/vllm-spyre-rhel9 1793444409, rhaii/model-opt-cuda-rhel9 1793444339
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:94715

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
14d ago

Exploit prediction

0.35% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 28% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
GitHub 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
OSV 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi pillow
>=9.1.0, <13.0.0
13.0.0
bitnami pillow
>=9.1.0, <13.0.0
13.0.0

Affected products

  • python-pillow Pillow

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of python-pillow/Pillow published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.