CVE-2026-42589criticalobserved exploitationCWE-78

CVE-2026-42589: critical vulnerability in gotenberg

Gotenberg: Unauthenticated RCE via ExifTool Metadata Key Injection

Published

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85Vexday Risk Score

Patch now. It exploitation observed by VulnCheck and has a working public exploit.

ssvc Actcvss 9.8epss 3.0%
from disclosure to weapon16 days
Published on NVDMay 14
1st PoC+16d
VulnCheck+40d
Gotenberg is a Docker-powered stateless API for PDF files. Prior to 8.31.0, Gotenberg's /forms/pdfengines/metadata/write HTTP endpoint accepts a JSON metadata object and passes its keys directly to ExifTool via the go-exiftool library. No validation is performed on key characters. A \n embedded in a JSON key splits the ExifTool stdin stream into a new argument line, allowing an attacker to inject arbitrary ExifTool flags — including -if, which evaluates Perl expressions. This achieves unauthenticated OS command execution in a single HTTP request. The response is HTTP 200 with a valid PDF, making the attack transparent to basic monitoring. This vulnerability is fixed in 8.31.0.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Affected products
gotenberg · gotenberg
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Related CVEs — gotenberg

In the same product, most dangerous first.

CVE-2026-40281CRITICALGotenberg vulnerable to argument injection via newlines in ExifTool metadata valuesEPSS 2.3%CVE-2026-40280HIGHGotenberg SSRF via case-insensitive URL scheme bypass in webhook and downloadFrom deny-listsEPSS 1.9%CVE-2026-27018HIGHGotenberg: Chromium deny-list bypass via case-insensitive URL schemeEPSS 1.7%CVE-2026-42596CRITICALGotenberg: Unauthenticated SSRF via default deny-list bypass in downloadFrom and webhookEPSS 1.6%CVE-2026-55229HIGHGotenberg: SSRF via LibreOffice document processingEPSS 1.5%CVE-2026-45742HIGHGotenberg: Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization ('Race Condition')EPSS 0.7%