CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-25796

Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

Published: Feb 24, 2026 | Modified: Feb 24, 2026
CVSS 3.x
7.5
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
5.3 MODERATE
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Ubuntu
MEDIUM
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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, in ReadSTEGANOImage() (coders/stegano.c), the watermark Image object is not freed on three early-return paths, resulting in a definite memory leak (~13.5KB+ per invocation) that can be exploited for denial of service. Versions 7.1.2-15 and 6.9.13-40 contain a patch.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

Affected Software

NameVendorStart VersionEnd Version
ImagemagickImagemagick*6.9.13-40 (excluding)
ImagemagickImagemagick7.0.0-0 (including)7.1.2-15 (excluding)
ImagemagickUbuntuesm-apps/focal*
ImagemagickUbuntuesm-apps/jammy*
ImagemagickUbuntuesm-apps/noble*
ImagemagickUbuntuesm-infra-legacy/trusty*
ImagemagickUbuntuesm-infra/bionic*
ImagemagickUbuntuesm-infra/xenial*
ImagemagickUbuntujammy*
ImagemagickUbuntunoble*
ImagemagickUbuntuquesting*
ImagemagickUbuntuupstream*

Potential Mitigations

  • Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
  • For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
  • When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
  • To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References