CVE-2026-21350
📋 TL;DR
Adobe After Effects versions 25.6 and earlier contain a NULL pointer dereference vulnerability that allows attackers to crash the application by tricking users into opening malicious files. This causes denial-of-service, disrupting workflows but not allowing code execution. Users running affected versions are vulnerable.
💻 Affected Systems
- Adobe After Effects
📦 What is this software?
⚠️ Risk & Real-World Impact
Worst Case
Application crashes repeatedly, preventing legitimate work and potentially causing data loss in unsaved projects.
Likely Case
Targeted user opens malicious file, causing After Effects to crash and disrupt their current project work.
If Mitigated
With proper controls, users avoid opening untrusted files, limiting impact to isolated crashes without data compromise.
🎯 Exploit Status
Exploitation requires user to open malicious file. No authentication bypass needed beyond social engineering.
🛠️ Fix & Mitigation
✅ Official Fix
Patch Version: 25.7 or later
Vendor Advisory: https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/after_effects/apsb26-15.html
Restart Required: Yes
Instructions:
1. Open Adobe Creative Cloud application. 2. Navigate to 'Apps' tab. 3. Find After Effects and click 'Update'. 4. Restart After Effects after update completes.
🔧 Temporary Workarounds
Restrict file opening
allConfigure After Effects to only open files from trusted sources using application settings or group policy.
🧯 If You Can't Patch
- Implement application whitelisting to prevent execution of untrusted After Effects project files.
- Educate users to never open After Effects files from untrusted sources or unknown emails.
🔍 How to Verify
Check if Vulnerable:
Check After Effects version via Help > About After Effects. If version is 25.6 or earlier, system is vulnerable.Check Version:
On Windows: Check registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\After Effects\XX.0\Installer (where XX is major version). On macOS: Check /Applications/Adobe After Effects XX/Adobe After Effects XX.app/Contents/Info.plistVerify Fix Applied:
Verify After Effects version is 25.7 or later via Help > About After Effects.📡 Detection & Monitoring
Log Indicators:
- Application crash logs showing NULL pointer dereference in After Effects
- Unexpected termination of After Effects process
Network Indicators:
- File downloads of After Effects project files from untrusted sources
SIEM Query:
EventID=1000 OR EventID=1001 AND ProcessName="AfterFX.exe" AND ExceptionCode=0xc0000005