CVE-2026-25988
Published: 24 February 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-25988 is a medium-severity Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime (CWE-401) vulnerability in Imagemagick Imagemagick. Its CVSS base score is 5.3 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 7.3th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Memory leak in network-reachable ImageMagick (MSL parser) directly enables remote exploitation of public-facing applications for resource-exhaustion DoS; maps to T1190 for the attack vector and T1499.004 for deliberate application exploitation causing service denial.
NVD Description
ImageMagick is free and open-source software used for editing and manipulating digital images. Prior to versions 7.1.2-15 and 6.9.13-40, sometimes msl.c fails to update the stack index, so an image is stored in the wrong slot and never freed on…
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error, causing leaks. Versions 7.1.2-15 and 6.9.13-40 contain a patch.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2026-25988 is a memory leak vulnerability in ImageMagick, a free and open-source software suite for editing and manipulating digital images. The flaw occurs in the msl.c component, where the stack index fails to update properly, resulting in images being stored in the wrong slot and not freed during error conditions. This affects ImageMagick versions prior to 7.1.2-15 and 6.9.13-40.
The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.3 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L), indicating it can be exploited over the network with low complexity by unauthenticated attackers without requiring user interaction. Exploitation triggers repeated memory leaks, enabling a denial-of-service condition through resource exhaustion, though it has no impact on confidentiality or integrity.
The official ImageMagick security advisory (GHSA-782x-jh29-9mf7) confirms that versions 7.1.2-15 and 6.9.13-40 include a patch to address the stack index update failure. Affected systems should be upgraded to these patched releases, and the issue is tracked under CWE-401 (Memory Leak).
Details
- CWE(s)