CVE-2025-52886: Poppler Use After Free Vulnerability

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.9 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2025-07-02 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-416

Description

Poppler is a PDF rendering library. Versions prior to 25.06.0 use `std::atomic_int` for reference counting. Because `std::atomic_int` is only 32 bits, it is possible to overflow the reference count and trigger a use-after-free. Version 25.06.0 patches the issue.

Affected products

poppler: before 25.06.0 — fixed in 25.06.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: poppler 25.06.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/commit/04bd91684ed41d67ae0f10cde0660e4ed74ac203
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/commit/ac36affcc8486de38e8905a8d6547a3464ff46e5
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/issues/1581
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler/-/merge_requests/1828
https://securitylab.github.com/advisories/GHSL-2025-054_poppler/
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/07/11/5
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/07/12/1

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