CVE-2023-44271

An issue was discovered in Pillow before 10.0.0. It is a Denial of Service that uncontrollably allocates memory to process a given task, potentially causing a service to crash by having it run out of memory. This occurs for truetype in ImageFont when textlength in an ImageDraw instance operates on a long text argument.

Published: 2023-11-03 Last update: 2026-06-17 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2023-44271 is rated Moderate Risk (51.6/100): CVSS High severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 1.04%). Review affected assets and schedule remediation.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2023-44271

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.22% 1.04% +0.81%
2 2026-03-30 0.15% 0.22% +0.08%
3 2025-11-21 — 0.15% —

Full EPSS history (14 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2023-44271

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
 3.9 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2023-44271

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2023-44271

GHSA-8ghj-p4vj-mr35 · Severity: high · Ecosystem: pip — Pillow Denial of Service vulnerability

OS Trackers for CVE-2023-44271

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2023-44271 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (pillow), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2023-44271
gentoo high CVE-2023-44271: 1 GLSA(s) (202405-12), 1 atom(s) (dev-python/pillow); latest impact high. https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=CVE-2023-44271
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-44271
suse high CVE-2023-44271 severity important: SUSE including 24 source package names (python-Pillow-4.2.1-3.23.2, python-Pillow-5.2.0-3.20.1, …), 47 product×package rows across 20 product lines (HPE Helion OpenStack 8, SUSE Liberty Linux 7, … (20 product lines)): Fixed 47. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-44271/
ubuntu low CVE-2023-44271 low priority: Ubuntu including 2 source packages (pillow, pillow-python2), 24 status rows across 12 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 10, released 6, not-affected 5, ignored 2, needs-triage 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-44271

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2023-44271

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
python pillow < 10.0.0 cpe:2.3:a:python:pillow:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
fedoraproject fedora 38 cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:38:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2023-44271

cvelogic Threat Intelligence