CVE-2026-31972
This bug may allow information about program state to be leaked.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.54%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
SAMtools is a program for reading, manipulating and writing bioinformatics file formats. The `mpileup` command outputs DNA sequences that have been aligned against a known reference. On each output line it writes the reference position, optionally the reference DNA base at that position (obtained from a separate file) and all of the DNA bases that aligned to that position. As the output is ordered by position, reference data that is no longer needed is discarded once it has been printed out. Under certain conditions the data could be discarded too early, leading to an attempt to read from a pointer to freed memory. This bug may allow information about program state to be leaked. It may also cause a program crash through an attempt to access invalid memory. This bug is fixed in versions 1.21.1 and 1.22. There is no workaround for this issue.
- CVSS 4.0
- 6.9 MEDIUMCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 0.54% probability · 45th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-416
- Affected
- samtools/samtools
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
EPSS 0.5% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
- https://github.com/samtools/samtools/commit/3036eb9af945fcef359427a2d359855553da4adfPatch
- https://github.com/samtools/samtools/security/advisories/GHSA-72c8-4jf3-f27pVendor Advisory
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/03/18/11Mailing List, Third Party Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.