CVE-2026-31973

NULL pointer dereference in samtools cram-size

State: Published
Severity: 6.9 Medium
Published: Mar 18, 2026
Updated: Mar 19, 2026
Reserved: Mar 10, 2026

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.

Scores

CVSS	Score	Vector	Source
4.0	6.9 Medium	CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N	GitHub_M

Weaknesses

CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

Affected Products

Product	Versions
samtoolssamtools	>= 1.17, < 1.21.1Affected >= 1.22, < 1.22.2Affected = 1.23Affected

References

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