Saving of cfimage to Database stopped working in 5.2.4.37

Error message happens when trying to save :
Can't cast String [Illegal character padding in sequence to be decoded: [0, =, =, =]] to a value of type [binary] Java

This problem is happening in code that has not been modified. The problem only occurs on version 5.2.4.37. When we use commandbox to specify any other previous lucee version, the code runs fine.

We are copying an image, watermarking and resizing it, then converting it to a png file, and saving it to a SQL Server database. The database column is a varbinary(max)

Code to create image (passGenerated is a cfimage variable):

local.passThumbnail=ImageNew(arguments.args.passGenerated);
// Add a "watermark"
local.width=ImageGetWidth(local.passThumbnail);
local.height=ImageGetHeight(local.passThumbnail);
ImageSetDrawingColor(local.passThumbnail,"C6C6C6");
ImageDrawLine(local.passThumbnail,0,0,local.width,local.height);
ImageDrawLine(local.passThumbnail,0,local.height,local.width,0);
ImageResize(local.passThumbnail,"20%","","highperformance");
local.ppArgs.passThumbnail = local.passThumbnail.getImageBytes('png');
Code that is saving it to the database:

local.qInsert = queryExecute(
" insert into pass_print_log
(requestID,passThumbnail,logid)
values
(:requestID,:passThumbnail,:logID)",
{
requestID:

{value: arguments.requestStruct.requestID, CFSQLType: 'CF_SQL_INTEGER'}

,
passThumbnail:

{value: arguments.requestStruct.passThumbnail, CFSQLType: 'CF_SQL_BLOB'}

,
logID:

{value: arguments.requestStruct.logID, CFSQLType: 'CF_SQL_BIGINT'}

},

{ datasource: instance.gmsbox.name, result: "qResult" }

);