Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-42057 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-42057 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-42057?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 7.5, published 29 October 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Kitware VTK 9.6.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-42057?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-2026-42057 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-42057?
- Check whether you run Kitware VTK at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
An expired pointer dereference vulnerability (CWE-825) exists in vtkPNGReader::vtkPNGReaderUpdate2 where a setjmp/longjmp error handler is placed in a function that returns before PNG decoding completes. When libpng encounters an error during image decode, longjmp returns to an invalid stack frame, corrupting the FILE pointer parameter used in fclose(), enabling potential code execution through FILE vtable redirection. The vulnerability affects VTK 9.6 and requires a network-accessible PNG file as attack vector with no authentication required.
Affected products
- Kitware VTK 9.6
Timeline
- 2026-10-29: disclosed