ImageMagick Flaw (CVE-2025-53101): Stack Buffer Overflow Allows Potential Remote Code Execution
Ddos 
A flaw has been discovered in ImageMagick, the widely used open-source image manipulation suite, that could lead to stack buffer overflows under specific conditions involving image filename templates. Tracked as CVE-2025-53101 and carrying a CVSS score of 7.4, this vulnerability puts systems at risk of memory corruption and potentially remote code execution when processing malicious file naming patterns.
“Specifying multiple consecutive %d format specifiers in a filename template causes internal pointer arithmetic to generate an address below the beginning of the stack buffer, resulting in a stack overflow through vsnprintf(),” the security advisory explains.
ImageMagick is a powerful, open-source software suite used to create, edit, convert, and display images in more than 200 formats. It is widely adopted by websites, cloud services, content pipelines, and graphics tools, especially for automated image processing via CLI commands and APIs.
The flaw lies in the InterpretImageFilename() function within image.c, where format specifiers such as %d, %o, and %x are used to dynamically create filenames for processed images.
Under normal circumstances, ImageMagick uses FormatLocaleString() to replace format specifiers with integers. However, the code that calculates where to write this output uses faulty pointer arithmetic:
“The offset variable is cumulatively incremented to correct the output length of %d etc., but the design using a static offset += (4 – field_width) causes offset to increase excessively when % specifiers are consecutive,” the advisory states.
This results in a negative index—causing the write pointer to move before the start of the stack buffer. As a result, the call to vsnprintf() begins overwriting memory outside of its bounds.
This vulnerability is classified under CWE-124: Buffer Underwrite, where memory is written to an address before the allocated space, often leading to crashes or exploitable memory corruption.
While the flaw is not trivially exploitable for remote code execution under normal configurations, it can be triggered in automated environments where untrusted input controls filename templates—such as web servers, CI/CD pipelines, or shared graphic processing utilities.
If successfully exploited, it may lead to:
- Application crashes
- Information leakage
- Potential RCE, especially in contexts where user-controlled templates are passed directly to CLI commands
The bug was initially detected using AddressSanitizer, which flagged it as a stack-buffer-overflow, confirming its potential to destabilize runtime environments.
The issue has been patched in the following ImageMagick versions:
- 7.1.2-0
- 6.9.13-26
Users should immediately upgrade to one of the patched versions. The fix addresses the core problem by modifying the offset handling logic to ensure template parsing aligns with actual field widths.
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