CVE-2015-8900 Imagemagick CVE debrief

Who should care

Teams that run ImageMagick in production, especially services or desktop workflows that accept untrusted HDR files. Security and operations teams should care most if image conversion jobs are exposed to user-supplied content or can be used to stall pipelines.

Technical summary

NVD describes the flaw as an infinite loop in ReadHDRImage within coders/hdr.c, triggered by a crafted HDR file. The NVD CVSS 3.1 vector is AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H, indicating no confidentiality or integrity impact but high availability impact. NVD maps the weakness to CWE-835 (infinite loop) and marks affected ImageMagick ranges as 6.0 through 6.9.3-10 and 7.0.1-0 through 7.0.5-0.

Defensive priority

Medium. This is an availability issue rather than a code-execution flaw, but it can still stall image-processing services or batch jobs that handle attacker-controlled HDR input. Patch during normal maintenance, and prioritize faster if ImageMagick is used in exposed or high-throughput conversion paths.

Recommended defensive actions

• Inventory ImageMagick deployments and compare them against the affected ranges listed by NVD: 6.0 through 6.9.3-10 and 7.0.1-0 through 7.0.5-0.
• Apply the vendor or downstream package fix referenced in the ImageMagick advisory, the GitHub commit, or your distribution’s security update.
• Restrict or sandbox workflows that process untrusted HDR files so a hung conversion job cannot block broader services.
• Add job timeouts, watchdogs, or worker restarts for image-processing pipelines to reduce the operational impact of infinite loops.
• Monitor for unusually long-running or stuck ImageMagick processes, especially where user-uploaded images are converted automatically.

Evidence notes

The source corpus includes the NVD CVE record, published 2017-02-27 and modified 2026-05-13. The description states that ReadHDRImage in coders/hdr.c can be forced into an infinite loop by a crafted HDR file. NVD lists CWE-835 and the CVSS 3.1 vector AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H. The affected version ranges are taken from NVD CPE criteria. References in the corpus include an ImageMagick vendor advisory, Openwall mailing list posts, a Red Hat bug, and a GitHub commit. Two Trac references are marked broken in the supplied metadata. The supplied enrichment does not place this CVE in CISA KEV.

Sources and references

Methodology and review provenance

AI-assisted synthesis based on stored public vulnerability evidence. System validation, approval state, and publication status do not by themselves establish human review of this revision. PatchSiren helps prioritize defensive review and does not prove exposure or remediation on any system.