🛡️ CVE-2026-31972 — samtools

🔴 CVSS 9.8 — Critical ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-416 NVD
9.8
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

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.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs no privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity high, availability high.

Weakness class

CVE-2026-31972 is classified as CWE-416: Use After Free. Memory is used after being released, so its contents may already belong to something else.

Affected software

CVE-2026-31972 is recorded against 1 package.

  • samtools (fixed in 1.21.1)

Timeline and source

Published on 18 March 2026 and last revised on 17 June 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. A vendor advisory or fix has been published. Record sourced from NVD.

References

github.com
github.com
www.openwall.com

CVE-2026-31972 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Details

Severity CRITICAL
CVSS Score 9.8
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE CWE-416
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2026-03-18
Updated 2026-08-11
Modified 2026-06-17

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
samtools — 1.21.1

Exploit Protection

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CVE-2026-31972 carries CVSS 9.8 Critical rating. BotEraser checks your installation against this and other known CVE records, and blocks IPs associated with exploit activity.

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