CVE-2022-42885HIGHCVSS 7.8

Open Babel has uninitialized pointer dereference in GRO residue parser

Published Jul 1, 2026·Updated Jul 1, 2026

Description

### Summary A memory-safety vulnerability in Open Babel's GRO parser caused an uninitialized pointer dereference when reading a crafted input file. ### Details The flaw was in the residue handling of the GRO reader. A malformed record caused the parser to use a residue pointer that had never been initialized. ### 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 GRO 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/fa9a2d9a 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 by Cisco TALOS.

Affected Packages (1)

openbabelPYPI
Fixed in 3.2.0

CVSS Vector

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

References

View on NVD Search GitHub Search Google

Get alerted for CVEs like this

Register your stack and get notified within minutes when a matching CVE drops.

Start monitoring free