CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2025-52885 — Poppler ia a library for rendering PDF files, and examining or modifying their structure
Poppler ia a library for rendering PDF files, and examining or modifying their structure. A use-after-free (write) vulnerability has been detected in versions Poppler prior to 25.10.0 within the StructTreeRoot class. The issue arises from the use of raw pointers to elements of a `std::vector`, which can lead to dangling pointers when the vector is resized. The vulnerability stems from the way that refToParentMap stores references to `std::vector` elements using raw pointers. These pointers may become invalid when the vector is resized. This vulnerability is a common security problem involving the use of raw pointers to `std::vectors`. Internally, `std::vector `stores its elements in a dynamically allocated array. When the array reaches its capacity and a new element is added, the vector reallocates a larger block of memory and moves all the existing elements to the new location. At this point if any pointers to elements are stored before a resize occurs, they become dangling pointers once the reallocation happens. Version 25.10.0 contains a patch for the issue.
- Severity
- Medium
- CVSS
- 6.1 (4.0)
- Published
- 2025-10-10
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-416
Affected products
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Matched remediation archetype
Use-after-free, double free, and expired resource use
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Check exposure
- Trace ownership, references, callbacks, asynchronous tasks, and teardown paths around the affected object or resource.
- Identify reachable inputs and timing or state transitions that can release the object while references remain.
- Confirm affected builds, allocators, feature flags, architectures, and process privileges.
Remediate safely
- Apply the maintained ownership or lifetime fix and rebuild all artifacts containing the affected native code.
- Use explicit ownership, safe reference management, cancellation and join semantics, and idempotent teardown.
- Add deterministic lifetime tests plus isolated sanitizer and concurrency coverage for shutdown and error paths.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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