GHSA-f37v-82c4-4x64 CVE-2026-34781

Electron: Crash in clipboard.readImage() on malformed clipboard image data

Low npm

Severity: 2.8 / 10; Low · CVSS 3.1
Exploit chance (EPSS): 0.14%; Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days. Higher than 3.67% of scored vulnerabilities.
Known exploited: No; Not in CISA's catalog
Weakness: CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference
Fix: 39.8.5; Upgrade electron to this version or later

Description

Impact

Apps that call clipboard.readImage() may be vulnerable to a denial of service. If the system clipboard contains image data that fails to decode, the resulting null bitmap is passed unchecked to image construction, triggering a controlled abort and crashing the process.

Apps are only affected if they call clipboard.readImage(). Apps that do not read images from the clipboard are not affected. This issue does not allow memory corruption or code execution.

Workarounds

Validate that the clipboard contains image data via clipboard.availableFormats() before calling clipboard.readImage(). Note this only narrows the window — upgrading to a fixed version is recommended.

Fixed Versions

42.0.0-alpha.5
41.1.0
40.8.5
39.8.5

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at security@electronjs.org

Affected versions

npm

Package	Vulnerable	Fixed in
electron	`< 39.8.5`	`39.8.5`
electron	`>= 40.0.0-alpha.1, < 40.8.5`	`40.8.5`
electron	`>= 41.0.0-alpha.1, < 41.1.0`	`41.1.0`
electron	`>= 42.0.0-alpha.1, < 42.0.0-alpha.5`	`42.0.0-alpha.5`

How to fix

Move to the fixed version or later with your package manager, update the lockfile, and run your tests. If the package only arrives through another dependency, upgrade that dependency first. If none of its releases pulls a fixed version yet, force the version with your package manager's override.

electron npm → `39.8.5`

npm

npm install electron@39.8.5

yarn

yarn add electron@39.8.5

pnpm

pnpm add electron@39.8.5

Severity breakdown

CVSS 3.1 2.8

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Attack vector: Local
Attack complexity: Low
Privileges required: Low
User interaction: Required
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: Low

Weakness

CWE-476: NULL Pointer Dereference

The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.

How to prevent it

Implementation: For any pointers that could have been modified or provided from a function that can return NULL, check the pointer for NULL before use. When working with a multithreaded or otherwise asynchronous environment, ensure that proper locking APIs are used to lock before the check, and unlock when it has finished [REF-1484].
Requirements: Select a programming language that is not susceptible to these issues.
Implementation: Check the results of all functions that return a value and verify that the value is non-null before acting upon it.
Architecture and Design: Identify all variables and data stores that receive information from external sources, and apply input validation to make sure that they are only initialized to expected values.
Implementation: Explicitly initialize all variables and other data stores, either during declaration or just before the first usage.

References

Advisories

nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-34781

Packages

github.com/electron/electron

Timeline

Apr 7, 2026 Published
Jul 24, 2026 Last updated by the source
Oct 31, 2026 Latest EPSS score

Advisory	Severity	Why it's related
GHSA-qqvq-6xgj-jw8g Electron affected by libvpx's heap buffer overflow in vp8 encoding	High Known exploited	Also affects electron
GHSA-j7hp-h8jx-5ppr libwebp: OOB write in BuildHuffmanTable	High Known exploited	Also affects electron
GHSA-995f-9x5r-2rcj Heap buffer overflow in GPU	Critical Known exploited	Also affects electron
GHSA-jr5w-w6x2-84p9 Electron: Mitigation for compromised eMudhra intermediate certificates	High	Also affects electron
GHSA-h3v5-h239-pg29 Electron: Off-screen rendering on macOS trusts GPU-supplied frame geometry	Low	Also affects electron
GHSA-3qxv-5xgr-q7w9 Electron: Frame subscription trusts GPU-supplied frame geometry	Low	Also affects electron
GHSA-997q-gvvc-jwmx Electron: openExternal permission requests can be attributed to the wrong origin	Medium	Also affects electron
GHSA-fw47-9c62-h3vw Electron: HID and USB permission checks can be attributed to the wrong origin	Medium	Also affects electron

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