CVE-2026-54920: OpenEXR: Integer overflow and uninitialized pointer cause invalid delete in OpenEXRUtil image resize

Published Aug 25, 2026
·
Updated

OpenEXR is the reference implementation and specification for the EXR image format, widely used in the motion picture industry. In versions 3.4.0 through 3.4.12, a reachable assertion failure in the HTJ2K decode path allows a crafted HTJ2K-compressed EXR file to cause an unconditional process abort in any application that calls exrstartread() on untrusted input, resulting in denial of service. The crash is triggered by a QCD marker whose lower five bits are zero, which OpenEXR passes into the vendored OpenJPH library while constructing the codestream and evaluating its quantization delta parameters. OpenJPH uses an assertion rather than a recoverable error to validate those bits, so any invalid value calls abort() directly and cannot be intercepted by surrounding error handling, a problem compounded by OpenEXR wrapping only its internal HT header parser in error handling while leaving the later codestream read and construction calls unprotected. This issue has been resolved in version 3.4.13.

Affected Software

2 affected components
OpenEXR OpenEXR>=3.4.0<=3.4.12
OpenEXR OpenEXR=3.4.13

Remediation

Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.

  1. Upgrade

    Upgrade OpenEXR (exr_start_read / HTJ2K decode path) to a version that resolves this vulnerability.

    Fixed in 3.4.13

Event History

Aug 25, 2026
CVE Published
via MITRE·12:10 AM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·12:10 AM
DescriptionSeverityWeakness

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