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MEDIUM Received

CVE-2026-59941

Dompdf is an HTML to PDF converter for PHP. Versions 3.15 and prior accept a BMP image and generates a PDF-compatible PNG based only on its declared header dimensions and never bounds width × height before the image is converted through GD. A 58-byte BMP whose header declares e.g. 6000×6000 is accepted and later drives imagecreatetruecolor($width, $height) (and PHP's native BMP decoder) to allocate the full pixel canvas. A payload can fit in a single HTTP request: the BMP can be inlined as a data:image/bmp;base64,… URI inside attacker-controlled HTML, so no upload, no remote fetch, and no chroot-reachable file is required. I measured a 169-byte request driving a dompdf render to ~412 MB peak RSS and ~4.8 s of CPU/wall time, versus ~34 MB for an identically-sized benign request — roughly a 12× memory amplification per request, repeatable and unauthenticated. This issue has been fixed in version 3.16.

Published 28 Jul 2026, 21:17 UTC Last modified 28 Jul 2026, 21:17 UTC
01

Attack profile

The conditions required to exploit this vulnerability and its potential impact.

Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Scope Not assessed
Confidentiality Not assessed
Integrity Not assessed
Availability Not assessed
02

Affected products

Product applicability statements supplied with the NVD record.

NVD has not published structured affected-product data for this record.
03

Weakness classification

CWE categories help security teams group the underlying software weakness.

04

Source references

External advisories, patches and technical reports attached to this CVE record.