CVE-2026-46599 — x/image
HIGHCVE-2026-46599 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-770 vulnerability in golang.org/x/image. A fix is available for golang.org/x/image — see the affected versions and patch details below.
golang.org/x/image/tiff has excessive resource consumption in PackBits decompression
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-46599.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
golang.org/x/imageReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
The TIFF decoder does not place a limit on the size of PackBits-compressed data. A maliciously-crafted image can exploit this to cause a small image (both in terms of pixel width/height and encoded size) to make the decoder decode large amounts of compressed data.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | golang.org/x/image | all versions | 0.41.0go get golang.org/x/image@v0.41.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for golang.org/x/image, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update golang.org/x/image to 0.41.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-46599 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.
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 issue as Moderate with RH CVSS 6.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H). A flaw was found in golang.org/x/image/tiff where the TIFF decoder does not limit the size of PackBits-compressed data. A maliciously crafted TIFF image with small declared dimensions can cause the decoder to process…
Update affected Go applications to use golang.org/x/image version 0.41.0 or later, which limits the amount of compressed data the decoder will process. As a workaround, restrict accepted image formats at the application edge and reject TIFF input where it is not a required format. Applications that do not decode untrusted TIFF images are not affected.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-46599 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Cryostat 4 on RHEL 9 | cryostat/cryostat-storage-rhel9:4.2.0-19 | RHSA-2026:48151 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-46599 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.