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PYSEC-2026-2778
No affected components available
Summary
A memory-safety vulnerability in Open Babel's ChemKin parser caused a heap buffer overflow when reading a crafted input file.
Details
The flaw was in ChemKinFormat::CheckSpecies. A malformed species
record caused the parser to write past the end of a heap-allocated
buffer.
Impact
Open Babel is a C++ library and CLI used to read and write chemistry
file formats; it is shipped by Linux distributions and embedded in
services that may parse untrusted input. Triggering this vulnerability
requires the victim to open a malicious ChemKin file with the
obabel tool, the OBConversion API, or any of the language
bindings (Python, Ruby, Java, R, Perl, C#, PHP).
Affected versions
All releases up to and including 3.1.1.
Patched version
3.2.0 (released 2026-05-26).
Patch
Fix commit: https://github.com/openbabel/openbabel/commit/af4a4212 Originally reported as #2830; fixes consolidated in #2913.
A minimized reproducer for this CVE is checked in under
test/files/fuzz_regress/ and is exercised on every CI build under
ASAN+UBSAN by the fuzzregresstest harness.
Credit
Reported via OSS-Fuzz.
The vulnerability requires local access to the device to be exploited. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. The attacker needs the user to perform some action, like clicking a link. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information. There is a high impact on the integrity of the data. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.
Exploitation activity has been observed. Apply available patches or mitigations urgently.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
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