🛡️ CVE-2026-53505 — thumbor

Thumbor proportion filter allows unbounded post-transform resize leading to remote DoS

Summary

Thumbor's filters:proportion(<value>) filter does not enforce an upper bound on <value> and runs in the post-transform phase. An attacker can trigger extremely large resizes (CPU/memory exhaustion) and cause denial of service.

Details

• Filter implementation: thumbor/filters/proportion.py
• value is parsed as a float (BaseFilter.DecimalNumber) with no maximum.
• The filter computes new_width = source_width * value and new_height = source_height * value and then calls engine.resize(new_width, new_height).
• Execution phase: proportion runs in the default POST_TRANSFORM phase (after the main transform pipeline). This means it can effectively bypass request-level size clamping that happens earlier in the request lifecycle (e.g., MAX_WIDTH/MAX_HEIGHT applied to req.width/req.height).

Documentation states the percentage argument should be 0.0 to 1.0 (docs/proportion.rst), but the implementation does not enforce this constraint.

PoC

Preconditions

• The proportion filter is enabled (it is enabled by default via BUILTIN_FILTERS).
• Either:
• /unsafe/ URLs are allowed (ALLOW_UNSAFE_URL=True, common default in some deployments), OR
• /unsafe/ is disabled, and the attacker has a valid signed URL (i.e., the attacker is an authorized user/partner, or otherwise can obtain signed URLs issued by a trusted signing service).

Example request 1 (signed URL)

The following request was used to reproduce the issue and causes severe resource exhaustion:

http://<host>:<port>/<url-sign>/100x100/filters:proportion(10000)/example.jpg

Example request 2 (/unsafe/)

If /unsafe/ is enabled:

http://<host>:<port>/unsafe/100x100/filters:proportion(10000)/example.jpg

Impact

• Remote Denial of Service via CPU and/or memory exhaustion (and potentially process crash / OOM kill).
• Exploitability depends on deployment:
• If /unsafe/ is enabled: unauthenticated remote DoS.
• If /unsafe/ is disabled: the attacker needs a valid signed URL (i.e., the attacker can legitimately request signed URLs, or has access to signed URLs issued for other users/partners). If signed URLs are not exposed to untrusted parties, exploitability is reduced but the risk still applies to any party who can generate/use signed URLs.

Suggested remediation

• Enforce a strict bound on the proportion parameter (e.g., 0.0 < value <= 1.0 as documented), or define a safe maximum based on intended semantics.