VDB
KO
HIGH 7.8

GHSA-8j3x-m868-cpw8

Open Babel has out-of-bounds write (overlapping memcpy) in zipstream basic_unzip_streambuf::underflow

Details

### Summary

A memory-safety vulnerability in Open Babel's bundled zipstream decompression code caused an out-of-bounds write via overlapping `memcpy` when reading a crafted gzip-compressed chemistry file.

### Details

The flaw was in `basic_unzip_streambuf::underflow`. The decompression buffer refill path invoked `memcpy` with overlapping source and destination regions, which is undefined behavior and produced out-of-bounds writes in practice. Any file format read through the gzip-wrapped reader was a potential trigger.

### 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 gzip-compressed chemistry 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/d4621d41 Originally reported as #2832; 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.

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Affected packages

PyPI / openbabel
Introduced in: 0 Fixed in: 3.2.0
Fix pip install --upgrade 'openbabel>=3.2.0'

References