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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.8

CVE-2021-25289 json

Out of bounds write in Pillow

published 2021-03-19 5 y ago modified 2026-09-08 2 mo ago also BIT-pillow-2021-25289 , EUVD-2021-0172 , GHSA-57h3-9rgr-c24m , PYSEC-2021-35

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.3%
EPSS 2.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 83%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in Pillow before 8.1.1. TiffDecode has a heap-based buffer overflow when decoding crafted YCbCr files because of certain interpretation conflicts with LibTIFF in RGBA mode. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2020-35654.

Patch / fix

  • pypi pillow 8.1.1
  • bitnami pillow 8.1.1
  • python pillow 8.1.1
  • pillow Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 8.1.1-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-25289

  • pillow Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 7.0.0-4ubuntu0.3

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-25289

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • python-Pillow SLE Module for Package Hub 15 SP6, openSUSE Leap 15.5 7.2.0-150300.3.15.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:1673-2SUSE-SU-2024:1673-1

  • python-Pillow openSUSE Tumbleweed 12.3.0-1.1
  • python-Pillow openSUSE Tumbleweed 8.3.2-1.2
  • python-Pillow openSUSE Tumbleweed 10.3.0-1.1
  • python-Pillow openSUSE Leap 15.2 8.3.1-lp152.5.3.1
  • python-CairoSVG openSUSE Leap 15.2 2.5.1-lp152.2.3.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:11261-1openSUSE-SU-2024:11209-1openSUSE-SU-2024:13827-1openSUSE-SU-2021:1134-1

  • py3-pillow Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +8 more 8.1.2-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2021-25289

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • python-pillow Arch Linux 8.1.2-1

arch linux advisories AVG-1635

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-2021-25289 updated cvss 9.8

python-pillow: insufficent fix for CVE-2020-35654 due to incorrect error checking in TiffDecode.c

  • Red Hat Quay v3 quay/quay-rhel8 v3.6.0-62
    fixed: vendor fix “Disable the invoice generation feature to mitigate this vulnerability in Red Hat Quay.” RHSA-2021:3917
  • Red Hat Quay v3 quay/clair-rhel8 v3.6.0-70, quay/quay-builder-rhel8 v3.6.0-44, quay/quay-operator-rhel8 v3.6.0-43, quay/quay-operator-bundle v3.6.0-48, quay/quay-bridge-operator-rhel8 v3.6.0-40, quay/quay-bridge-operator-bundle v3.6.0-35, +3 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 python-pillow, python-pillow-qt, python-pillow-tk, python-pillow-sane Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 python-pillow, python3-pillow, python3-pillow-tk Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 python-pillow
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

Exploit prediction

2.34% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 83% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
GitHub 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
OSV 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi pillow
<8.1.1
8.1.1
bitnami pillow
<8.1.1
8.1.1

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns 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.