CVE-2026-31970: high-severity vulnerability in samtools htslib
HTSlib BGZF index file reader has a heap buffer overflow
Published
E-mail alert when it lands in KEV, gets a public PoC or its score goes up.
21Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 7.1epss 0.5%
HTSlib is a library for reading and writing bioinformatics file formats. GZI files are used to index block-compressed GZIP [BGZF] files. In the GZI loading function, `bgzf_index_load_hfile()`, it was possible to trigger an integer overflow, leading to an under- or zero-sized buffer being allocated to store the index. Sixteen zero bytes would then be written to this buffer, and, depending on the result of the overflow the rest of the file may also be loaded into the buffer as well. If the function did attempt to load the data, it would eventually fail due to not reading the expected number of records, and then try to free the overflowed heap buffer. Exploiting this bug causes a heap buffer overflow. If a user opens a file crafted to exploit this issue, it could lead to the program crashing, or overwriting of data and heap structures in ways not expected by the program. It may be possible to use this to obtain arbitrary code execution. Versions 1.23.1, 1.22.2 and 1.21.1 include fixes for this issue. The easiest work-around is to discard any `.gzi` index files from untrusted sources, and use the `bgzip -r` option to recreate them.
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:H/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Affected products
samtools · htslibRelated CVEs — samtools htslib
In the same product, most dangerous first.
CVE-2026-31966MEDIUMHTSlib CRAM reader has out-of-bounds read due to improper validation of inputEPSS 0.5%CVE-2026-31967MEDIUMHTSlib CRAM reader has out-of-bounds read due to improper validation of inputEPSS 0.5%CVE-2026-31968HIGHHTSlib CRAM decoder vulnerable to buffer overflowEPSS 0.4%CVE-2026-31965MEDIUMHTSlib CRAM reader has out-of-bounds reads due to improper validation of inputEPSS 0.4%CVE-2026-31962HIGHHTSlib CRAM reader has heap buffer overflow due to improper validation of inputEPSS 0.4%CVE-2026-31963HIGHHTSlib CRAM reader has heap buffer overflow due to improper validation of inputEPSS 0.4%