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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2021-28677 json

Uncontrolled Resource Consumption in Pillow

published 2021-06-02 5 y ago modified 2026-09-08 2 mo ago also BIT-pillow-2021-28677 , EUVD-2021-0184 , GHSA-q5hq-fp76-qmrc , PYSEC-2021-93

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.5%
EPSS 2.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 84%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in Pillow before 8.2.0. For EPS data, the readline implementation used in EPSImageFile has to deal with any combination of \r and \n as line endings. It used an accidentally quadratic method of accumulating lines while looking for a line ending. A malicious EPS file could use this to perform a DoS of Pillow in the open phase, before an image was accepted for opening.

Patch / fix

  • pypi pillow 8.2.0
  • bitnami pillow 8.2.0
  • python pillow 8.2.0
  • pillow Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 8.1.2+dfsg-0.2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-28677

  • pillow Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 5.1.0-1ubuntu0.6
  • pillow Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 7.0.0-4ubuntu0.4
  • pillow Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS 2.3.0-1ubuntu3.4+esm5
  • pillow Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 3.1.2-0ubuntu1.6+esm3

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-28677

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 RHEL 8 5.1.1-16.el8
  • python3-pillow RHEL 8 5.1.1-16.el8

red hat advisories RHSA-2021:4149

  • python-Pillow openSUSE Leap 15.5 7.2.0-150300.3.12.1
  • python-Pillow OpenStack Cloud 7 2.8.1-4.22.1
  • python-Pillow OpenStack Cloud Crowbar 8, OpenStack Cloud 8, HPE Helion OpenStack 8 4.2.1-3.14.1
  • python-Pillow OpenStack Cloud Crowbar 9, OpenStack Cloud 9 5.2.0-3.8.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2024:1607-1SUSE-SU-2021:1940-1SUSE-SU-2021:1939-1SUSE-SU-2021:1938-1

  • python3-pillow AlmaLinux 8 5.1.1-16.el8

almalinux advisories ALSA-2021:4149

  • python-pillow Rocky Linux 8 5.1.1-16.el8

rocky linux advisories RLSA-2021:4149

  • py3-pillow Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +8 more 8.2.0-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2021-28677

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

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-2021-28677 updated cvss 7.5

python-pillow: Excessive CPU use in EPS image reader

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 python-pillow, python-pillow-qt, python-pillow-tk, python-pillow-sane
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “To mitigate this feature on Red Hat Quay keep the invoice generation feature disabled, as it is by default.”
  • Red Hat Quay 3 quay/quay-rhel8
    affected: workaround, no fix available “To mitigate this feature on Red Hat Quay keep the invoice generation feature disabled, as it is by default.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 8) python-pillow 5.1.1-16.el8, python3-pillow 5.1.1-16.el8
    fixed: vendor fix “To mitigate this feature on Red Hat Quay keep the invoice generation feature disabled, as it is by default.” RHSA-2021:4149

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

2.47% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 84% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
GitHub 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
OSV 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi pillow
<8.2.0
8.2.0
bitnami pillow
<8.2.0
8.2.0

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

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.