CVE-2014-1932 PIL and Pillow Vulnerable to Symlink Attack on Tmpfiles

What is CVE-2014-1932?

CVE-2014-1932 is a medium-severity path traversal vulnerability in Python Pillow, published on 17 Apr 2014. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

The (1) load_djpeg function in JpegImagePlugin.py, (2) Ghostscript function in EpsImagePlugin.py, (3) load function in IptcImagePlugin.py, and (4) _copy function in Image.py in Python Image Library (PIL) 1.1.7 and earlier and Pillow before 2.3.1 do not properly create temporary files, which allow local users to overwrite arbitrary files and obtain sensitive information via a symlink attack on the temporary file.

Weakness: CWE-59

Which versions are affected by CVE-2014-1932?

3 open source packages ship an affected version, including pillow. It affects 2 products.

Products include Python Pillow, Pythonware Python Imaging Library.

How do I fix CVE-2014-1932?

Upgrade pillow to 2.3.1 or later.

Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.

Is CVE-2014-1932 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2014-1932 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Python Pillow

• CVE-2014-3007 Pillow command injection Critical 10.0
• CVE-2026-96639 Pillow multi-frame loaders can reuse stale native image storage after mode transitions Critical 9.8
• CVE-2022-30595 Buffer over-flow in Pillow Critical 9.8
• CVE-2021-25289 Out of bounds write in Pillow Critical 9.8
• CVE-2016-4009 Pillow Integer overflow in ImagingResampleHorizontal Critical 9.8

All Python Pillow vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2014-1932, GHSA-x895-2wrm-hvp7, PYSEC-2014-22.