GHSA-gxcx-qjqp-8vjw is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-401 vulnerability in Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU. A fix is available for Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU — see the affected versions and patch details below.
ImageMagick has memory leak in msl encoder
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 GHSA-gxcx-qjqp-8vjw.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-gxcx-qjqp-8vjw plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,166 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU.NETMagick.NET-Q16-HDRI-AnyCPU.NETMagick.NET-Q16-HDRI-OpenMP-arm64.NETMagick.NET-Q16-HDRI-OpenMP-x64.NETMagick.NET-Q16-HDRI-arm64.NETMagick.NET-Q16-HDRI-x64.NETMagick.NET-Q16-HDRI-x86.NETMagick.NET-Q16-OpenMP-arm64+11 moreReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects NuGet packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Memory leak exists in coders/msl.c. In the WriteMSLImage function of the msl.c file, resources are allocated. But the function returns early without releasing these allocated resources.
==78983== Memcheck, a memory error detector
==78983== Copyright (C) 2002-2022, and GNU GPL'd, by Julian Seward et al.
==78983== Using Valgrind-3.22.0 and LibVEX; rerun with -h for copyright info
==78983==
==78983== 177,196 (13,512 direct, 163,684 indirect) bytes in 1 blocks are definitely lost in loss record 21 of 21
==78983== at 0x4846828: malloc (in /usr/libexec/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-linux.so)
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| .NETNuGet | Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU | all versions | 14.10.3dotnet add package Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU --version 14.10.3 |
| .NETNuGet | Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-AnyCPU | all versions | 14.10.3dotnet add package Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-AnyCPU --version 14.10.3 |
| .NETNuGet | Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-OpenMP-arm64 | all versions | 14.10.3dotnet add package Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-OpenMP-arm64 --version 14.10.3 |
| .NETNuGet | Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-OpenMP-x64 | all versions | 14.10.3dotnet add package Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-OpenMP-x64 --version 14.10.3 |
| .NETNuGet | Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-arm64 | all versions | 14.10.3dotnet add package Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-arm64 --version 14.10.3 |
| .NETNuGet | Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-x64 | all versions | 14.10.3dotnet add package Magick.NET-Q16-HDRI-x64 --version 14.10.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update Magick.NET-Q16-AnyCPU to 14.10.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-gxcx-qjqp-8vjw is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
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.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-gxcx-qjqp-8vjw can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-gxcx-qjqp-8vjw. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-gxcx-qjqp-8vjw in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-gxcx-qjqp-8vjw across NuGet dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.