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OpenAdvisories
Medium · 6.2 CVE-2023-36807 EUVD-2023-1823GHSA-hm9v-vj3r-r55mPYSEC-2026-1836

Infinite Loop when reading malformed objects in pypdf

Published Jun 30, 2023 · Updated Nov 6, 2024 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

pypdf is a pure-python PDF library capable of splitting, merging, cropping, and transforming the pages of PDF files. In version 2.10.5 an attacker who uses this vulnerability can craft a PDF which leads to an infinite loop. This infinite loop blocks the current process and can utilize a single core of the CPU by 100%. It does not affect memory usage. That is, for example, the case if the user extracted metadata from such a malformed PDF. Versions prior to 2.10.5 throw an error, but do not hang forever. This issue was fixed with https://github.com/py-pdf/pypdf/pull/1331 which has been included in release 2.10.6. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should modify `PyPDF2/generic/_data_structures.py::read_object` to an an error throwing case. See GHSA-hm9v-vj3r-r55m for details.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
py-pdf pypdf 2.10.5 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 12 pypdf2 2.10.7-1 —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
PyPI pypdf2 >= 2.10.5, < 2.10.6 2.10.6 GHSA-hm9v-vj3r-r55m

References