What is CVE-2026-53532?
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.
The record classifies CVE-2026-53532 under weakness class CWE-617. 1 affected-product entry is recorded, across 1 vendor, listed below. The identifier was first published 42 days ago.
Severity and exploitation probability
- CVSS v4.0 base score
- 7.1 — High (derived from score)
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N - EPSS (FIRST)
- 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 17.6% of all scored CVEs
- CISA KEV
- Not listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
- Threadlinqs priority
- 4.3/10 — a Threadlinqs composite of the CVSS base score, the EPSS percentile and public exploit availability
- Published
- 2026-08-24
Is CVE-2026-53532 being exploited?
It currently carries a trending score of 34 in the Threadlinqs vulnerability feed.
Affected products and versions
- AcademySoftwareFoundation: openexr
How to fix CVE-2026-53532
No vendor patch reference has been recorded for CVE-2026-53532 in the tracked sources. Follow the references below for a fix, and treat the products listed above as exposed until the vendor states otherwise.
Threat activity tracking CVE-2026-53532
No threat campaign in the Threadlinqs corpus currently references CVE-2026-53532, in its CVE list or as an indicator. The linkage is recomputed from the live corpus on every daily ingest, so this section fills in as soon as a tracked campaign cites the identifier.
Sources
Enriched from CVE.org, NVD, FIRST EPSS. Last verified by Threadlinqs on . This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.