CVE-2025-68469 is a recently disclosed vulnerability in ImageMagick, a popular free and open-source tool for editing and manipulating images. This security flaw affects all versions prior to ImageMagick 7.1.1-14, and allows a remote attacker to crash the application by simply getting it to process a malformed TIFF file. This could potentially lead to Denial-of-Service (DoS) conditions in any system or service built upon ImageMagick — from cloud image conversion APIs to photo gallery servers.

In this article, we’ll break down how the vulnerability works, how it can be triggered, and what steps you should take to protect yourself.

What is ImageMagick?

ImageMagick is a widely-used toolset for image creation, editing, and conversion. It powers countless web and desktop applications. ImageMagick supports hundreds of image formats, including JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and GIF.

Vulnerability Details

CVE-2025-68469 affects ImageMagick versions prior to 7.1.1-14. The bug occurs during processing of certain TIFF image files. If an attacker uploads or submits a crafted (malformed) TIFF file, ImageMagick will crash. The vulnerability was fixed in v7.1.1-14.

Remote attackers can use this crash to launch DoS attacks against web servers or applications that use ImageMagick, causing service disruptions.

How Does the Exploit Work?

The core issue lies in how ImageMagick handles TIFF files. TIFF is a complex format, and crafted image files can have data that triggers logic errors in the ImageMagick code. When such a file is fed to ImageMagick (often via convert or identify), the application will access invalid memory or hit a bad logic path, leading it to crash.

Note: No code execution is known, but crashing image-processing services can take whole web services or APIs offline.

Proof-of-Concept: Crafting a Malicious TIFF

It's easy to test whether your ImageMagick installation is vulnerable. Let’s craft a simple malicious TIFF. For illustrative purposes, here’s a very basic TIFF header using Python — you’ll need the Pillow and tifffile libraries.

import tifffile as tiff
import numpy as np

# Create a small array with weird metadata
image = np.zeros((1,1), dtype='uint16')

# Add unusual TIFF tags to create a "crafted" file
metadata = {'Software': b'evil-tester', 'Artist': b'crasher'}

# Save crafted TIFF
tiff.imwrite('crash_test.tiff', image, metadata=metadata)

Now, try to process this TIFF with the vulnerable version of ImageMagick

convert crash_test.tiff output.png

On a vulnerable version, this could result in a segmentation fault or crash. The real-world exploits may involve fuzzing or specially corrupted binary values that trigger the crash more reliably.

For a more sophisticated crafted TIFF, attackers may use existing TIFF fuzzers to automatically generate files that make ImageMagick crash.

Example Exploit Flow

1. Attacker uploads “evil” TIFF file to a website or service that uses ImageMagick for processing images.

While parsing, ImageMagick hits unsupported or weird data fields, causing it to crash.

4. The web service, cloud function, or API using ImageMagick sees its process killed or goes offline — classic Denial-of-Service.

How To Fix

- Upgrade Immediately: The only way to fully resolve this issue is to update ImageMagick to version 7.1.1-14 or later. Download the latest version here:
https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php

Restrict Uploads: If possible, restrict the file formats users can upload.

- Use Sandboxing: Isolate ImageMagick processing to contained environments, limiting the impact if a crash occurs.
- Monitor Logs: Watch for segmentation faults or crashes involving “TIFF” processing in application logs.

References & Further Reading

- ImageMagick Release Notes (7.1.1-14)
- CVE-2025-68469 Entry on MITRE
- ImageMagick Security Policy
- Secure Use of ImageMagick

Summary

ImageMagick’s CVE-2025-68469 shows how even mature, widely-used tools can be tripped up by malicious files in complex formats like TIFF. Left unpatched, any service using an older version is vulnerable to relatively simple Denial-of-Service attacks. The good news: updating to 7.1.1-14 or newer fixes the bug. Make sure to check your software today!

Timeline

Published on: 12/18/2025 15:36:28 UTC
Last modified on: 12/30/2025 19:56:36 UTC