CVE-2026-31964CWE-476

HTSlib CRAM decoder has a NULL Pointer Dereference

Medium · published March 18, 2026

CVSS v4.0
6.9
EPSS
1%
Percentile
42.4
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

HTSlib is a library for reading and writing bioinformatics file formats. CRAM is a compressed format which stores DNA sequence alignment data using a variety of encodings and compression methods. While most alignment records store DNA sequence and quality values, the format also allows them to omit this data in certain cases to save space. Due to some quirks of the CRAM format, it is necessary to handle these records carefully as they will actually store data that needs to be consumed and then discarded. Unfortunately the `CONST`, `XPACK` and `XRLE` encodings did not properly implement the interface needed to do this. Trying to decode records with omitted sequence or quality data using these encodings would result in an attempt to write to a NULL pointer. 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.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v4.0
6.9 · MEDIUM
Vector
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
EPSS
0.00507 · 42.4th percentile
Weakness
CWE-476 · NULL Pointer Dereference
Published
2026-03-18T18:27Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 18 MAR 18:27Z
    HTSlib CRAM decoder has a NULL Pointer Dereference
    cvelistv5