Adobe After Effects: NULL pointer dereference causes application denial-of-service
Summary
Adobe After Effects contains a NULL pointer dereference (CWE-476) that can crash the application. An attacker can exploit it by convincing a victim to open a malicious file, which results in a denial-of-service condition. The issue has only availability impact, with no confidentiality or integrity impact.
Affected
- Adobe After Effects 26.5 and earlier (Windows and macOS)
- Adobe After Effects 25.6.6 and earlier (Windows and macOS)
Fixed in
- Adobe After Effects 27.0 (fixes the 25.6 line and later)
- Adobe After Effects 26.5.3 (fixes the 26.5 line)
Workaround
Unknown.
Exploitation
- Adobe is not aware of any exploits in the wild for any issue in APSB26-100.
- No public proof of concept found for this CVE; this is not confirmed absence.
- Not listed in CISA KEV according to a third-party aggregator; not verified against the CISA catalogue.
Our recommendation
- Update After Effects to 27.0 (or 26.5.3 on the 26.5 line) via the Adobe Download Center.
- Patch the entire product, since APSB26-100 also fixes several high-severity issues.
- Until patched, only open project files from trusted sources, especially files from external freelancers or clients.
- Check which systems have After Effects installed and prioritise studios and agencies that open external files.
Public exploits
PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit and Exploit-DB list nothing for this CVE.
Research sources
- Adobe Security Bulletin APSB26-100 (primary advisory) www.adobe.com
- CVE Record CVE-2026-113521 (CNA: Adobe) www.cve.org
- Zero Day Initiative: November 2026 security update review www.zerodayinitiative.com
Researched and written up in English and German by an AI (Claude by Anthropic) based on NVD, CISA, EPSS and the sources listed. The vendor information is authoritative. Researched on 11 Nov 2026, 16:16.
Original description (NVD)
After Effects is affected by a NULL Pointer Dereference vulnerability that could result in an application denial-of-service. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to crash the application, leading to a denial-of-service condition. Exploitation of this issue requires user interaction in that a victim must open a malicious file.
Sources
The tracker combines official, freely usable data sources – updated continuously:
- NVD (NIST) – CVEs, rating (CVSS), affected products
- CISA KEV – vulnerabilities confirmed by CISA as actively exploited
- CISA Vulnrichment – CISA assessment (SSVC) in the official CVE record
- FIRST EPSS – probability of exploitation
- Microsoft MSRC – Patch Tuesday: vulnerabilities, severity, updates
- PoC-in-GitHub – public proof-of-concept repositories
- Metasploit (Rapid7) – modules of the Metasploit Framework
- Exploit-DB (OffSec) – archive of public exploits (links only)
- Patch days: official vendor pages (linked per vendor) (Vendor patch days)
This product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS data © FIRST.org.
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