pdfseparate recurses without limit on a crafted PDF
An issue in the pdfseparate utility of freedesktop poppler v25.04.0 allows attackers to cause an infinite recursion via supplying a crafted PDF file.
- Advisory
- CVE-2025-50420
- Library
- poppler, poppler on Debian
- Published
- Severity
- 6.5 out of 10, as published
- Affected
- poppler 25.04.0
- Fixed in
- see the upstream record
- Reaches you
- through a command-line tool
What triggers it
Running poppler's pdfseparate utility on a crafted PDF.
What sillybos does
Not reached by opening a file
Opening or reading a file never reaches this flaw, so a check before decoding has nothing to refuse. Listed so that nobody expects it to.
Reported against the pdfseparate utility; pdfinfo and the renderer are not named. If the recursion were in shared parsing code, pdfinfo's time limit would turn it into a refusal.
Proposed from the advisory's text on 2026-11-01, as part of folding the backfill into the record; confirmed by a person on 2026-11-03.
How to protect yourself
In general. Upgrade poppler to a version that has the fix; the upstream record names it.
Specifically. Not a pre-decode matter: a command-line tool, not the library, runs the flawed code.
The general advice applies to every row here.
Sources
- https://osv.dev/vulnerability/DEBIAN-CVE-2025-50420
- The record entry, triaged 2026-11-03, last checked 2026-11-03