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High · 8.2 Public exploit CVE-2026-43893 EUVD-2026-29322GHSA-cw26-7653-2rp5

exiftool-vendored: Argument injection via newline characters in tag names

Published May 11, 2026 · Updated May 12, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

exiftool-vendored provides cross-platform Node.js access to ExifTool. Prior to 35.19.0, exiftool-vendored starts ExifTool in -stay_open True -@ - mode, where arguments are read from stdin one per line. In affected versions, several caller-supplied strings were interpolated into ExifTool arguments without rejecting line delimiters. A newline or carriage return inside one of those strings could split a single intended argument into multiple ExifTool arguments, allowing argument injection. The fix also rejects NUL bytes as unsafe control characters. Applications that pass attacker-controlled strings to affected APIs may allow an attacker to make ExifTool read files accessible to the ExifTool process, or write output to attacker-chosen file system paths accessible to that process. No remote code execution has been demonstrated. This vulnerability is fixed in 35.19.0.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
photostructure exiftool-vendored.js < 35.19.0 —

Public exploits

Exploit or proof-of-concept code for this vulnerability is publicly available, which lowers the bar for attackers. Treat it as a reason to patch sooner.

Third-party code, not reviewed by us. Public PoCs are sometimes fake or contain malware. Read the code first and run it only in an isolated lab, against systems you are authorised to test.

GitHub 1 repository

Sources: PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit Framework, Exploit-DB — updated daily. Only links are listed; no exploit code is hosted here.

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
npm exiftool-vendored < 35.19.0 35.19.0 GHSA-cw26-7653-2rp5

References