GHSA-4f6g-68pf-7vhv

ghsaUSosv

pypdf has possible long runtimes for malformed startxref

view advisory published 2026-01-09Licence: CC-BY-4.0

### Impact An attacker who exploits this vulnerability can craft a PDF which leads to possibly long runtimes for invalid `startxref` entries. When rebuilding the cross-reference table, PDF files with lots of whitespace characters become problematic. Only the non-strict reading mode is affected. ### Patches This has been fixed in [pypdf==6.6.0](https://github.com/py-pdf/pypdf/releases/tag/6.6.0). ### Workarounds ```python from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter # Instead of reader = PdfReader("file.pdf") # use the strict mode: reader = PdfReader("file.pdf", strict=True) # Instead of writer = PdfWriter(clone_from="file.pdf") # use an explicit strict reader: writer = PdfWriter(clone_from=PdfReader("file.pdf", strict=True)) ``` ### Resources This issue has been fixed in #3594.

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describes (1)

Related CVEs.

IDseverity exploitable
CVE-2026-22691USmedium5.3—
pypdf is a free and open-source pure-python PDF library. Prior to version 6.6.0, pypdf has possible long runtimes for malformed startxref. An attacker who uses this vulnerability c…
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