CVE-2026-123616imgproxy excessive memory allocation
CVE-2026-123616 is a excessive memory allocation in imgproxy, rated high (8.7 on CVSS 4.0).
Why this priority: High severity, with no exploitation signal yet.
Published · Updated · NVD status: Received
What it is
A size taken from input makes the software try to allocate huge amounts of memory.
How it is reached
An attacker can exploit it over the network, without an account, and nobody has to click anything.
What an attacker gains
A successful attack can take it offline. In practice, this kind of flaw lets an attacker exhaust CPU, memory or connections until the service stops answering.
Is it being exploited?
There is no public report of exploitation yet.
What to do
- Upgrade imgproxy to 4.0.16 or later.
- Until it is patched, keep it off the internet or behind a VPN, allowlist or authenticating proxy.
Description from NVD
imgproxy from 3.3.0 before 4.0.16 contains an unbounded memory allocation vulnerability in the ICO loader that fails to validate the data_size field. Attackers can supply a crafted 23-byte ICO file declaring a ~4GB data_size to trigger memory exhaustion and worker crashes without authentication.
What this means for your architecture.
A CVE names a product. Whether it matters depends on where that product sits in your systems: what reaches it, which trust boundary it guards and what it can reach once compromised. Veriom maps your components, their relationships and your trust boundaries from your code, cloud and delivery evidence, so you can see where a component like this sits. The radar itself does not look at your systems.
Components it touches
- Public entry points and shared services that must stay up. The flaw sits between untrusted traffic and shared capacity.
Trust boundaries in play
- Internet-facing entry points. No account is needed. Any instance reachable from outside your perimeter, through a load balancer, gateway, VPN or exposed admin port, is in scope.
- Between untrusted traffic and shared capacity. An attacker who crosses it can exhaust CPU, memory or connections until the service stops answering.
Questions to answer about your own systems
- Where does imgproxy run in your systems, and at which version?
- Which of those instances can be reached from the internet or partner networks?
- What can it reach once compromised: which data stores, secrets and services?
Sources
- CVE records and CVSS scores from the NVD CVE API. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.
- Exploitation status from CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.
- Exploit likelihood from FIRST’s Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS), refreshed daily.
- Explanations are written by Veriom from fixed templates over each record’s data, not by a person reviewing each CVE. Descriptions are quoted from the records as published.