poppler's 32-bit reference count can overflow into a use-after-free
Poppler is a PDF rendering library.
- Advisory
- CVE-2025-52886
- Library
- poppler, poppler on Debian
- Published
- Severity
- 5.9 out of 10, as published
- Affected
- poppler before 25.06.0
- Fixed in
- 25.06.0
- Reaches you
- by opening a file
What triggers it
A PDF that makes poppler take more than 2^32 references to one object.
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 the object reference counting that every poppler tool shares, pdfinfo included. A file that overflowed it would crash pdfinfo, and a non-zero exit is a refusal, so the check fails closed; within max_bytes, that many references is impractical.
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 25.06.0.
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-2025-52886
- The record entry, triaged 2026-11-03, last checked 2026-11-03