CVE-2026-112258 — Red Hat
HIGHCVE-2026-112258 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.8) Use After Free vulnerability. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
A flaw was found in GIMP. The XCF loader can leave a dangling pointer in the linked-channels list when a linked channel is later destroyed via a selection property. Opening a crafted…
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-112258 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 391,915 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
A flaw was found in GIMP. The XCF loader can leave a dangling pointer in the linked-channels list when a linked channel is later destroyed via a selection property. Opening a crafted XCF file can cause a use-after-free in the main GIMP process, leading to a crash and potentially arbitrary code execution.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2026-112258 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Red Hat rates this vulnerability as Important severity because successful exploitation allows arbitrary code execution in the security context of the user running the application. Although GIMP is an interactive desktop utility and does not listen on network sockets, memory corruption during project parsing enables an…
Avoid opening untrusted XCF files in GIMP until an update is available. If GIMP is unused, remove the gimp package. --- CME Mitigation Guidance (2026-10-20) --- Disclaimer: The following mitigation solutions are provided as a courtesy, pending the application of an official patch. This content was generated utilizing AI tools in conjunction with data from https://cmetaxonomy.org. Customers are advised to independently evaluate and test these temporary mitigations within their own infrastructure. The highest-value action is to prevent GIMP from processing untrusted XCF files or ensure channel destruction invalidates pointers stored in linked_channels prior to dereferencing in…Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-112258 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-112258 in your dependencies?
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