Your RSA-2048 keys break in 2030. Find every one of them before attackers do.
📦 npm
Not in CISA KEV

CVE-2026-8814 — exifreader

Fix: mattiasw/ExifReader@5f11612

CVE-2026-8814 is a CWE-409 vulnerability in exifreader. A fix is available for exifreader — see the affected versions and patch details below.

ExifReader is vulnerable to denial of service via unbounded decompression of image metadata

Also known asGHSA-rr89-w3h9-m66j
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 10, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

Proof-of-concept exploit code exists

  • CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
  • CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-8814.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
0.5%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs41th percentile — riskier than 41% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.34%0.67%1.01%0.1%0.5%Jun 26Sep 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected

How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.

141other npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream
exifreadernpm
285Kdownloads / week

Description

Impact

Versions of ExifReader from 4.20.0 through 4.38.1 do not bound the size of decompressed metadata blocks. When a caller invokes the asynchronous API (e.g. ExifReader.load(file) or ExifReader.load(buffer, {async: true})) on an attacker-supplied image, a small compressed chunk in the file can expand to hundreds of megabytes of memory, consuming heap and CPU until the process slows down or runs out of memory.

The affected paths share a single decompression utility, so the issue is reachable through any compressed metadata block the library handles asynchronously, including:

  • PNG zTXt, compressed iTXt, and iCCP chunks (deflate)
  • JPEG XL Brotli-compressed Exif and XMP blocks

A typical proof of concept produced roughly 1000× expansion (for example, ~32 KB of compressed input expanded to ~32 MB of output, ~130 KB to ~128 MB).

Both the npm package and the dist/ bundle published from this repository (consumed by Bower and other users of the prebuilt artifact) are affected.

Patches

Fixed in 4.39.0. The decompression utility now reads the decompressed stream incrementally and aborts as soon as the running total would exceed a configurable limit. The default cap is 128 MiB per metadata block, which is well above any realistic legitimate value. When a block exceeds the cap, that block is skipped (a warning is emitted via console.warn) and the remaining tags are returned as usual.

The cap is configurable via the new maxDecompressedSize field on the decompress option, in bytes:

const tags = await ExifReader.load(file, {
    async: true,
    decompress: {
        maxDecompressedSize: 16 * 1024 * 1024 // 16 MiB
    }
});

The same cap applies to results returned by user-supplied custom brotli/deflate functions.

Workarounds

  • If upgrading is not possible, avoid invoking the asynchronous API on untrusted inputs. The synchronous code path skips compressed metadata blocks entirely and is not affected. Alternatively, pre-validate input files by source or size before passing them to ExifReader.

Resources

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
📦npmexifreader≥ 4.20.0&&< 4.39.04.39.0npm install exifreader@4.39.0

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for exifreader, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update exifreader to 4.39.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-8814 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Impact Versions of ExifReader from 4.20.0 through 4.38.1 do not bound the size of decompressed metadata blocks. When a caller invokes the asynchronous API (e.g. `ExifReader.load(file)` or `ExifReader.load(buffer, {async: true})`) on an attacker-supplied image, a small compressed chunk in the file can expand to hundreds of megabytes of memory, consuming heap and CPU until the process slows down or runs out of memory. The affected paths share a single decompression utility, so the issue is reachable through any compressed metadata block the library handles asynchronously, including: - PNG
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2026-8814 in your dependencies?

Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works
CVE-2026-8814: exifreader — Fixed in 4.39.0