Attack ChainAIDerived
Hypothetical attack flow derived from CVE metadata – not a confirmed exploit chain
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AccessSubmit crafted highly-compressed MAT file
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ExploitMAT decoder inflates stream past policy limit
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ImpactOversized temp file exhausts disk space
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
ASVS 5.0
V2 - Validation and Business Logic Compression ratio limits
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| Exploitation Conditions | Exploitation requires that the target application lets an attacker supply a MAT (MATLAB) format image that ImageMagick will decode through its MAT coder (coders/mat.c decompress_block path), and that a security-policy resource limit is relied upon to cap disk usage - the flaw is that a highly compressed MAT stream bypasses that limit by writing an oversized temporary file during zlib inflation. Limiting factors: impact is confined to availability (disk/temp-space exhaustion) with no code execution, data disclosure, or integrity loss; the practical network vector depends on the deployment accepting remote/untrusted image input (upload, conversion, thumbnailing services), whereas systems that only process trusted local images face a much narrower, effectively local exposure. Affected versions are ImageMagick before 7.1.2-30 and before 6.9.13-55. |
| Impact | This is a resource-exhaustion (data-amplification) flaw, not a memory-safety or code-execution issue. The CVSS 3.1 vector (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L) and the 5.3 Medium base score agree with the description and CWE-409 (Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data): the only impact is availability (A:L) via excessive temporary-disk consumption - there is no confidentiality or integrity impact. No EPSS score, CISA KEV listing, or public POC was provided in the intelligence set, so there is no evidence of active exploitation or weaponization; the only 'exploit' artifacts are the upstream fix commits, which demonstrate the mechanism but are not attack code. The real-world priority is therefore moderate-to-low: although the attack vector is network-reachable and requires no authentication, the ceiling is a denial-of-service against disk space rather than compromise. One caveat to verify: AV:N assumes the affected system ingests attacker-supplied MAT files over the network (e.g., an upload/conversion service); in deployments where ImageMagick only processes trusted local images, the practical vector is closer to local and the real risk is lower. The input tag 'Authentication Bypass' conflicts with every other signal - this vulnerability bypasses a resource security-policy limit, not an authentication control - and should be disregarded as mislabeled. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | An attacker uploads a specially crafted, highly compressed MAT (MATLAB) image to a service that uses ImageMagick for image processing or conversion. When ImageMagick's MAT decoder inflates the embedded zlib stream, it writes a temporary file far larger than the configured security-policy resource limit, filling the disk and degrading or denying service. No public exploit code is identified at time of analysis, but the attack is low-complexity and requires no authentication or user interaction if the service accepts remote file submissions. |
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Alert meAnalysisAIv1 – Oct 07, 2026
Resource exhaustion in ImageMagick's MAT image decoder (coders/mat.c) lets a crafted, highly compressed MAT file inflate far beyond the configured security-policy resource limit, writing an oversized temporary file to disk and consuming excessive storage until the host runs out of temp space. All ImageMagick releases before 7.1.2-30 (7.x line) and before 6.9.13-55 (6.x line) are affected, and the flaw is unauthenticated and remotely reachable per the assessed vector (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L, base 5.3) wherever untrusted image input is accepted, such as upload, conversion, or thumbnailing services; deployments that only process trusted local images face a much narrower exposure. Impact is confined to availability - there is no code execution, data disclosure, or integrity loss - and the vendor has shipped fixes in 7.1.2-30 and 6.9.13-55; no public exploit has been identified at time of analysis.
RemediationAI
Apply the vendor patches: upgrade to ImageMagick 7.1.2-30 or later on the 7.x branch, or 6.9.13-55 or later on the 6.x branch (vendor-released patch: 7.1.2-30 and 6.9.13-55), using the commits ae2ed8c81d8fad1f186e7f2bc0837b46a1c7be61 (7.x) and 7d8e0eb11804a5ce5322ea317dfd3557cded4e7b (6.x) and the advisory at https://github.com/ImageMagick/ImageMagick/security/advisories/GHSA-3j4w-pvxj-fpjc as verification references. Where upgrading is not immediately possible, the most reliable compensating control is to disable MAT decoding entirely by adding <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="MAT" /> to policy.xml - at the cost of losing MATLAB image support for all legitimate workflows. Raising or relying on existing resource limits (memory/disk/map) alone is not sufficient, since this flaw specifically bypasses those limits; operators can still reduce blast radius by confining ImageMagick's temporary-file directory to a size-quota'd filesystem or tmpfs so oversized writes fail fast, and by redirecting MAGICK_TEMPORARY_PATH to an isolated, monitored directory - accepting that malicious jobs will then error out instead of completing, and that the process may still consume I/O and CPU until the 512 MB/64x caps or quota is hit. In addition, do not feed untrusted images to the MAT coder: filter uploads by content type and magic bytes, and run the conversion service with a least-privileged user, a constrained container filesystem, and monitoring/alerting on temp-directory growth. No public exploit has been identified at time of analysis, so these measures primarily address future proof-of-concept or weaponized payloads that reuse the disclosed technique.
Affected VersionsENISA
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 1 package in euvd
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Technical ContextAI · show details
The issue is a data-amplification (decompression-bomb) flaw classified as CWE-409, Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data, in ImageMagick's MATLAB MAT format coder. When ImageMagick parses a MAT file, coders/mat.c calls decompress_block(), which uses zlib's inflate() to expand embedded compressed streams into a temporary file created via AcquireUniqueFileResource(). Prior to the fix, the loop accumulated total_size but never compared it against the amount of compressed input consumed, so a small, highly compressed MAT payload could expand unboundedly and produce a temporary file far larger than what ImageMagick's security-policy resource limits (memory/disk/map caps in policy.xml) were supposed to permit - the policy limit was effectively bypassed for this code path. The upstream commit ae2ed8c81d8fad1f186e7f2bc0837b46a1c7be61 (7.x) and its 6.x backport 7d8e0eb11804a5ce5322ea317dfd3557cded4e7b add two hard ceilings during inflation: MAX_ABSOLUTE_SIZE = 512 MB and MAX_EXPANSION_RATIO = 64x relative to compressed_total, aborting with Z_DATA_ERROR when either is exceeded. The patch also tightens the write path (checking fwrite() return values, using fdopen("ab+") and reusing mat_file rather than reopening it) and adds cleanup of the resource limit tracking. The associated CPE, cpe:2.3:a:imagemagick:imagemagick:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*, confirms that every unpatched ImageMagick distribution is in scope.
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Attacker-supplied MAT file processed by a network-facing service needs no auth or interaction (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N); only disk-exhaustion availability impact (A:L), no C/I impact.
Primary rating from Vendor (GitHub_M).
CVSS VectorVendor: GitHub_M
Lifecycle Timeline
2DescriptionCVE.org
ImageMagick is free and open-source software used for editing and manipulating digital images. Prior to 7.1.2-30 and 6.9.13-55, a crafted highly compressed MAT image can make the MAT decoder create temporary files larger than the configured security-policy limit, bypassing resource restrictions and consuming excessive disk space. This issue is fixed in versions 7.1.2-30 and 6.9.13-55.
Threat Intelligence Overview
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
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EUVD-2026-94411
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
Vulnrichment
GitHub
Exploit-DB