CVE-2026-59204: Pillow JPEG2000 tiled decode retains a growing scratch buffer and can be used for denial of service

Summary src/libImaging/Jpeg2KDecode.c:853 accumulates totalcomponentwidth across every tile in a JPEG2000 image instead of recomputing it per tile. That accumulated value is then used in the tilebytes calculation at src/libImaging/Jpeg2KDecode.c:868, which can make the decoder grow state->buffer via realloc at src/libImaging/Jpeg2KDecode.c:876 up to roughly one full image's decompressed size even when each tile is small. A crafted tiled JPEG2000 file can therefore force substantially higher transient memory usage and trigger out-of-memory failures during decoding. Based on current evidence, the supported impact is denial of service, not memory corruption.

Details - Location: src/libImaging/Jpeg2KDecode.c:853 - Root cause: totalcomponentwidth is initialized only once before the tile loop and keeps growing across tiles. It is then used to derive tilebytes, so later tiles are treated as if they had the combined component width of all earlier tiles. - Dangerous operation: tilebytes is promoted into tileinfo.datasize, then state->buffer is grown with realloc at src/libImaging/Jpeg2KDecode.c:876. - Reachability: any attacker-controlled JPEG2000 image with many tiles reaches this path during normal Image.open(...).load() decoding.

PoC The attached helper script and testcase were used: exercisej2ktilerealloc.zip

Generate the testcase:

bash pythonexercisej2ktilerealloc.py make poc3664rgbatile1832.jp2 \ --size 3664 --tile 1832

Expected geometry from the helper:

- image size: 3664 x 3664 - mode: RGBA - tile size: 1832 x 1832 (2x2 tiles) - imagebytes=53699584 - uncapped RSS observed: - vulnerable build: maxrsskb=180264 - fixed comparison build: maxrsskb=138404

Load it with the current vulnerable build:

bash python exercisej2ktilerealloc.py load poc3664rgbatile1832.jp2

Load it again under a 160 MB address-space cap:

bash python exercisej2ktilerealloc.py load poc3664rgbatile1832.jp2 --limit-mb 160

Impact Conservative impact: denial of service through memory exhaustion during JPEG2000 decoding.