CVE-2026-53532: academysoftwarefoundation openexr Reachable Assertion

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-53532 is a high (CVSS 7.1) Reachable Assertion vulnerability in academysoftwarefoundation openexr. EPSS estimates a 0.45% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 37.3% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 24-08-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 28-08-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

OpenEXR is the reference implementation and specification for the EXR image format, widely used in the motion picture industry. In versions 3.4.0 through 3.4.12, a crafted HTJ2K-compressed EXR file causes an unconditional process abort in any application that calls exr_start_read() on untrusted input, resulting in denial of service. The crash is triggered by a QCD marker whose lower five bits are zero, which OpenEXR passes into the vendored OpenJPH library while constructing the codestream and evaluating its quantization delta parameters. OpenJPH uses an assertion rather than a recoverable error to validate those bits, so any invalid value calls abort() directly and cannot be intercepted by surrounding error handling, a problem compounded by OpenEXR wrapping only its internal HT header parser in error handling while leaving the later codestream read and construction calls unprotected. This issue has been resolved in version 3.4.13.

• CWE-617Reachable AssertionThe product contains an assert() or similar statement that can be triggered by an attacker, which leads to an application exit or other behavior that is more severe than necessary.