Pillow
CVE-2021-27921
HIGH
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A05:2025 - Injection
ASVS 5.0
V2 - Validation and Business Logic Input validation, allowlisting
|
| Impact | CVSS score of 7.5 (HIGH). Attack characteristics: network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction not required. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | This vulnerability can be exploited remotely over the network. Successful exploitation could compromise the high-severity affected system. |
Get an e-mail when this CVE is exploited, patched or re-scored. Free account.
Alert meAnalysisAI
Pillow before 8.1.2 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) because the reported size of a contained image is not properly checked for a BLP container, and thus an. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
RemediationAI
No vendor patch is available at time of analysis. Monitor vendor advisories for updates. Apply vendor patches when available. Implement network segmentation and monitoring as interim mitigations.
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in pypi
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified under CWE-20. Pillow before 8.1.2 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) because the reported size of a contained image is not properly checked for a BLP container, and thus an attempted memory allocation can be very large. Affected products include: Python Pillow, Fedoraproject Fedora. Version information: before 8.1.2.
Know when Pillow gets its next vulnerability
- Watch products and get an email when something new is published
- Check this CVE against your own stack and servers
- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
No credit card · 7-day full trial
Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionNVD
Pillow before 8.1.2 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) because the reported size of a contained image is not properly checked for a BLP container, and thus an attempted memory allocation can be very large.
Blast Radius
ecosystem impact- 55 pypi packages depend on pillow (50 direct, 5 indirect)
Ecosystem-wide dependent count for version 8.1.2.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Denial of Service attacks render applications or systems unavailable by overwhelming resources or triggering failure conditions.
Affected Products (CPE)NVD
libImaging/TgaRleDecode.c in Pillow 9.1.0 has a heap buffer overflow in the processing of invalid TGA image files. Rated
Denial of service in Python Pillow (versions 8.2.0 through 12.2.0) allows remote attackers to exhaust memory during JPEG
Out-of-bounds memory disclosure in Python Pillow before 12.3.0 lets an attacker who supplies a crafted McIdas AREA image
Heap out-of-bounds write in Python Pillow prior to 12.3.0 lets an attacker who controls the rank-filter size parameter c
Uncontrolled memory consumption in Python Pillow (PIL) versions 5.1.0 through 12.2.x allows a remote attacker to cause d
The package pillow 5.2.0 and before 8.3.2 are vulnerable to Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) via the getrgb
Pillow is a Python imaging library. In versions 11.2.0 to before 11.3.0, there is a heap buffer overflow when writing a
Integer overflow in the ImagingResampleHorizontal function in libImaging/Resample.c in Pillow before 3.1.1 allows remote
Python Image Library (PIL) 1.1.7 and earlier and Pillow 2.3 might allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands v
Pillow through 8.2.0 and PIL (aka Python Imaging Library) through 1.1.7 allow an attacker to pass controlled parameters
An issue was discovered in Pillow before 8.1.1. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerability is remotely explo
libImaging/PcxDecode.c in Pillow before 6.2.2 has a PCX P mode buffer overflow. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this
GitHub PoC
Exploit-DB