# CVE-2026-88054: Tesseract empty network stack denial of service in model deserialization

Source: https://junglewise.ai/threats/cve-2026-88054-tesseract-empty-network-stack-denial-of-service-in-model  
Publisher: Junglewise Threat Intelligence, https://junglewise.ai/threats  
Published: 2026-09-10. Updated: 2026-09-26  
License: CC BY 4.0 with a link back

CVE-2026-88054 · Severity: medium · CVSS 5.5 · Published 2026-09-10

Tesseract is an open-source optical character recognition (OCR) engine used to extract text from images and documents. A flaw in how it validates trained model files allows a specially crafted model to crash the application when loaded, preventing OCR processing from functioning. An attacker who can supply a malicious trained model file can trigger a denial-of-service condition that affects any application relying on Tesseract for text recognition.

Technologies: [Tesseract OCR Tesseract](https://junglewise.ai/threats/technologies/tesseract). Vendors: [Tesseract OCR](https://junglewise.ai/threats/vendors/tesseract-ocr).

## Quick answers

**Is CVE-2026-88054 exploited in the wild?** No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-88054 being exploited in the wild.

**How severe is CVE-2026-88054?** Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5.5, published 10 September 2026.

**Which products and versions are affected?** Tesseract OCR Tesseract 5.5.3 and earlier.

**Is there a fix for CVE-2026-88054?** A patch was published on 2026-08-25: Commit 552771236b0d80cbdb0c7dd856120fa21a4672e5 on 2026-08-25, but no fixed release available as of advisory publication Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.

**How is CVE-2026-88054 attacked?** It is attacked with local access, in a software library.

**Am I affected by CVE-2026-88054?** Check whether you run Tesseract OCR Tesseract 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

The vulnerability is a null-pointer dereference in the LSTM (neural network) model deserialization logic. Specifically, Plumbing::DeSerialize in plumbing.cpp validates that network stack sizes are not excessively large (rejecting sizes > 10,000) but fails to reject zero-length stacks for NT_SERIES, NT_PARALLEL, or NT_REVERSED layer types. When LSTMRecognizer initialization calls CacheXScaleFactor(XScaleFactor()) at load time, Series::CacheXScaleFactor unconditionally dereferences stack_[0] on the empty vector, resulting in a virtual method call through a wild pointer. This causes a deterministic crash with no memory corruption—purely a denial of service. The attack requires a locally-supplied or attacker-controlled .traineddata model file; no patch was available as of the advisory publication date.

## Affected products

- Tesseract OCR Tesseract 5.5.3 and earlier

## Timeline

- 2026-09-10: disclosed
- 2026-08-25: patched: Commit 552771236b0d80cbdb0c7dd856120fa21a4672e5 on 2026-08-25, but no fixed release available as of advisory publication

## References

- [https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract/commit/552771236b0d80cbdb0c7dd856120fa21a4672e5](https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract/commit/552771236b0d80cbdb0c7dd856120fa21a4672e5)
- [https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract/security/advisories/GHSA-f6h7-cqr4-6fx4](https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract/security/advisories/GHSA-f6h7-cqr4-6fx4)

## Related threats

- [Tesseract unsafe pointer deserialization in adaptive templates](https://junglewise.ai/threats/cve-2026-119341-tesseract-is-an-open-source-ocr-engine-prior-to-5-5-4)
- [Tesseract matrix deserialization integer overflow denial of service](https://junglewise.ai/threats/cve-2026-119340-tesseract-is-an-open-source-ocr-engine-prior-to-5-5-4-generic-2d)
- [Tesseract OCR heap out-of-bounds write in inttemp deserialization](https://junglewise.ai/threats/cve-2026-88053-tesseract-ocr-heap-out-of-bounds-write-in-inttemp-deserialization)
- [Tesseract heap out-of-bounds write in UNICHARSET loading](https://junglewise.ai/threats/cve-2026-88052-tesseract-heap-out-of-bounds-write-in-unicharset-loading)
- [Tesseract heap out-of-bounds write in GenericVector::read](https://junglewise.ai/threats/cve-2026-88051-tesseract-heap-out-of-bounds-write-in-genericvector-read)