CVE-2026-31973

Description

SAMtools is a program for reading, manipulating and writing bioinformatics file formats. Starting in version 1.17, in the cram-size command, used to write information about how well CRAM files are compressed, a check to see if the `cram_decode_compression_header()` was missing. If the function returned an error, this could lead to a NULL pointer dereference. Exploiting this bug causes a NULL pointer dereference. Typically this will cause the program to crash. Versions 1.23.1, 1.22.2 and 1.21.1 include fixes for this issue. There is no workaround for this issue.

References

https://github.com/samtools/samtools/security/advisories/GHSA-x86f-q6fj-cm43

https://github.com/samtools/samtools/commit/06fc2a219b3d7c94d3f412c09f6d1efd51199f2f

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/03/18/12

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Risk Information

CVSS v2

CVSS v3

CVSS v4