Executive brief
Open Babel, a chemical toolbox used for processing molecular data, is vulnerable to a crash when processing specifically crafted ChemKin files. An attacker with local access to the system could provide a malformed file that causes the application to stop responding. This issue primarily impacts the availability of the software during data conversion tasks.
Technical details
A NULL pointer dereference exists in the ChemKinFormat::ReadReactionQualifierLines function within src/formats/chemkinformat.cpp of Open Babel. The vulnerability is triggered when the parser assumes a non-null string while calling c_str() during token comparison of malformed ChemKin input. An attacker with local access can provide a crafted file to trigger a segmentation fault (SEGV), resulting in a denial-of-service. This issue was identified via fuzzing and is addressed in version 3.2.0.
Affected products
- Open Babel Open Babel < 3.2.0
Timeline
- 2025-09-14: disclosed: Issue reported on GitHub with PoC
- 2025-09-26: advisory: Initial GHSA and NVD publication
- 2026-07-01: patched: Version 3.2.0 identified as patched version in withdrawn duplicate advisory