poppler's structure tree holds dangling pointers after a vector resize
Poppler ia a library for rendering PDF files, and examining or modifying their structure.
- Advisory
- CVE-2025-52885
- Library
- poppler, poppler on Debian
- Published
- Severity
- not scored upstream
- Affected
- poppler before 25.10.0
- Fixed in
- 25.10.0
- Reaches you
- by opening a file
What triggers it
A tagged PDF whose structure tree makes poppler resize the vector that refToParentMap points into.
What sillybos does
Reaches pdfinfo itself
The flaw is in the PDF parser sillybos asks, in a separate process with a time limit, so a crash or a hang there is one file refused.
In StructTreeRoot, parsed when a tool reads the structure of a tagged file; pdfinfo may do so for a tagged document. A crash in pdfinfo is a refusal (fails closed); in the renderer, nothing a header shows distinguishes the file.
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 to poppler 25.10.0.
Specifically. Render PDFs in a boxed process with memory and time limits (see Decoding in a box); nothing read before decoding can see this.
The general advice applies to every row here.
Sources
- https://osv.dev/vulnerability/DEBIAN-CVE-2025-52885
- The record entry, triaged 2026-11-03, last checked 2026-11-03