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CVE-2022-46290

Open Babel has out-of-bounds write in ORCA nAtoms parser (second variant)

9.8 CriticalFix available

Multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities exist in the ORCA format nAtoms functionality of Open Babel 3.1.1 and master commit 530dbfa3. A specially-crafted malformed file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.The loop that stores the coordinates does not check its index against nAtoms

Attack profile

How easy it is to exploit

Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges needed
None
User interaction
None

What an attacker can affect

Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Exploit likelihood

0.80%Up 0.8 points since Jul 22, 2023
90%50%10%1%

What each source reports

CVE List Score used 9.8

Multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities exist in the ORCA format nAtoms functionality of Open Babel 3.1.1 and master commit 530dbfa3. A specially-crafted malformed file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.The loop that stores the coordinates does not check its index against nAtoms

Record
CVE-2022-46290
CVSS 3.1
9.8 CriticalCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness
CWE-122
Updated
2026-11-02
EUVDEUVD-2022-49108 9.8

Multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities exist in the ORCA format nAtoms functionality of Open Babel 3.1.1 and master commit 530dbfa3. A specially-crafted malformed file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.The loop that stores the coordinates does not check its index against nAtoms

Record
EUVD-2022-49108
CVSS 3.1
9.8 CriticalCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Updated
2026-11-02
GitHub AdvisoriesGHSA-5rff-8f7c-8jmw 7.8

Open Babel has out-of-bounds write in ORCA nAtoms parser (second variant)

Summary

A memory-safety vulnerability in Open Babel's ORCA parser allowed an out-of-bounds write when reading a crafted input file.

Details

A second variant of the nAtoms out-of-bounds write in the ORCA reader: a different malformed-input path produced the same class of write past the end of the destination buffer.

Impact

Open Babel is a C++ library and CLI used to read and write chemistry file formats; it is shipped by Linux distributions and embedded in services that may parse untrusted input. Triggering this vulnerability requires the victim to open a malicious ORCA file with the obabel tool, the OBConversion API, or any of the language bindings (Python, Ruby, Java, R, Perl, C#, PHP).

Affected versions

All releases up to and including 3.1.1.

Patched version

3.2.0 (released 2026-05-26).

Patch

Fix commit: https://github.com/openbabel/openbabel/commit/b239d06e

A minimized reproducer for this CVE is checked in under test/files/fuzz_regress/ and is exercised on every CI build under ASAN+UBSAN by the fuzzregresstest harness.

Credit

Reported by Cisco TALOS.

Record
GHSA-5rff-8f7c-8jmw
CVSS 3.1
7.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness
CWE-122, CWE-787
Updated
2026-11-02
GitHub AdvisoriesGHSA-wj42-v2p3-fq2w 9.8

Duplicate Advisory: Open Babel has out-of-bounds write in ORCA nAtoms parser (second variant)

Duplicate Advisory

This advisory has been withdrawn because it is a duplicate of GHSA-5rff-8f7c-8jmw. This link is maintained to preserve external references.

Original Description

Multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities exist in the ORCA format nAtoms functionality of Open Babel 3.1.1 and master commit 530dbfa3. A specially-crafted malformed file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.The loop that stores the coordinates does not check its index against nAtoms

Record
GHSA-wj42-v2p3-fq2w
CVSS 3.1
9.8 CriticalCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness
CWE-122, CWE-787
Updated
2026-11-02
NVD 9.8

Multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities exist in the ORCA format nAtoms functionality of Open Babel 3.1.1 and master commit 530dbfa3. A specially-crafted malformed file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.The loop that stores the coordinates does not check its index against nAtoms

Record
CVE-2022-46290
CVSS 3.1
9.8 CriticalCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 3.1
7.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness
CWE-122, CWE-787
Updated
2026-11-02
OSV 7.8

Multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities exist in the ORCA format nAtoms functionality of Open Babel 3.1.1 and master commit 530dbfa3. A specially-crafted malformed file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.The loop that stores the coordinates does not check its index against nAtoms

Record
CVE-2022-46290
CVSS 3.1
7.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Updated
2026-11-02
Show 6 moreShow less
OSVGHSA-5rff-8f7c-8jmw 7.8

Open Babel has out-of-bounds write in ORCA nAtoms parser (second variant)

Summary

A memory-safety vulnerability in Open Babel's ORCA parser allowed an out-of-bounds write when reading a crafted input file.

Details

A second variant of the nAtoms out-of-bounds write in the ORCA reader: a different malformed-input path produced the same class of write past the end of the destination buffer.

Impact

Open Babel is a C++ library and CLI used to read and write chemistry file formats; it is shipped by Linux distributions and embedded in services that may parse untrusted input. Triggering this vulnerability requires the victim to open a malicious ORCA file with the obabel tool, the OBConversion API, or any of the language bindings (Python, Ruby, Java, R, Perl, C#, PHP).

Affected versions

All releases up to and including 3.1.1.

Patched version

3.2.0 (released 2026-05-26).

Patch

Fix commit: https://github.com/openbabel/openbabel/commit/b239d06e

A minimized reproducer for this CVE is checked in under test/files/fuzz_regress/ and is exercised on every CI build under ASAN+UBSAN by the fuzzregresstest harness.

Credit

Reported by Cisco TALOS.

Record
GHSA-5rff-8f7c-8jmw
CVSS 3.1
7.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness
CWE-122, CWE-787
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVGHSA-wj42-v2p3-fq2w 9.8

Duplicate Advisory: Open Babel has out-of-bounds write in ORCA nAtoms parser (second variant)

Duplicate Advisory

This advisory has been withdrawn because it is a duplicate of GHSA-5rff-8f7c-8jmw. This link is maintained to preserve external references.

Original Description

Multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities exist in the ORCA format nAtoms functionality of Open Babel 3.1.1 and master commit 530dbfa3. A specially-crafted malformed file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.The loop that stores the coordinates does not check its index against nAtoms

Record
GHSA-wj42-v2p3-fq2w
CVSS 3.1
9.8 CriticalCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness
CWE-122, CWE-787
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVPYSEC-2026-2773 7.8

Open Babel has out-of-bounds write in ORCA nAtoms parser (second variant)

Summary

A memory-safety vulnerability in Open Babel's ORCA parser allowed an out-of-bounds write when reading a crafted input file.

Details

A second variant of the nAtoms out-of-bounds write in the ORCA reader: a different malformed-input path produced the same class of write past the end of the destination buffer.

Impact

Open Babel is a C++ library and CLI used to read and write chemistry file formats; it is shipped by Linux distributions and embedded in services that may parse untrusted input. Triggering this vulnerability requires the victim to open a malicious ORCA file with the obabel tool, the OBConversion API, or any of the language bindings (Python, Ruby, Java, R, Perl, C#, PHP).

Affected versions

All releases up to and including 3.1.1.

Patched version

3.2.0 (released 2026-05-26).

Patch

Fix commit: https://github.com/openbabel/openbabel/commit/b239d06e

A minimized reproducer for this CVE is checked in under test/files/fuzz_regress/ and is exercised on every CI build under ASAN+UBSAN by the fuzzregresstest harness.

Credit

Reported by Cisco TALOS.

Record
PYSEC-2026-2773
CVSS 3.1
7.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVUBUNTU-CVE-2022-46290 9.8

Multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities exist in the ORCA format nAtoms functionality of Open Babel 3.1.1 and master commit 530dbfa3. A specially-crafted malformed file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.The loop that stores the coordinates does not check its index against nAtoms

Record
UBUNTU-CVE-2022-46290
CVSS 3.1
9.8 CriticalCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 3.1
7.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVDEBIAN-CVE-2022-46290 No score

Multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities exist in the ORCA format nAtoms functionality of Open Babel 3.1.1 and master commit 530dbfa3. A specially-crafted malformed file can lead to arbitrary code execution. An attacker can provide a malicious file to trigger this vulnerability.The loop that stores the coordinates does not check its index against nAtoms

Record
DEBIAN-CVE-2022-46290
Updated
2026-11-03
OSVopenSUSE-SU-2026:21190-1 No score

Security update for openbabel

This update for openbabel fixes the following issues:

Changes in openbabel:

  • Update to version 3.2.0:
    • Add an L-BFGS optimizer, used by default for gen3d and conformer searches
    • New macrocycle ring builder (Dale codes) for better initial 3D geometry of large rings
    • Add KET (Ketcher JSON) and ChemicalJSON (.cjson) format support
    • Drop Python 2 support; Python 3.13 supported
    • Faster, vectorized distance-geometry implementation
    • Full CMake 4 compatibility and modernized build
    • Backwards compatible with 3.0 and 3.1
    • Fix many crash and memory-safety bugs found via OSS-Fuzz and TALOS, including the following security issues: CVE-2022-37331 (boo#1217676), CVE-2022-41793, CVE-2022-42885, CVE-2022-43467, CVE-2022-43607, CVE-2022-44451, CVE-2022-46280, CVE-2022-46289, CVE-2022-46290, CVE-2022-46291, CVE-2022-46292, CVE-2022-46294, CVE-2022-46295, CVE-2025-10994, CVE-2025-10995, CVE-2025-10996, CVE-2025-10997, CVE-2025-10998, CVE-2025-10999, CVE-2025-11000, CVE-2026-2704 (boo#1258501), CVE-2026-2705 (boo#1258507) and CVE-2026-3408 (boo#1259041)
Record
openSUSE-SU-2026:21190-1
Updated
2026-11-02

Affected products

Affected packages

Affected packages
PackageAffectedFixed
openbabel
PyPI
 before 3.2.0
3.2.0
openbabel
Debian:12
 All versions, plus listed versions
3.1.1+dfsg-103.1.1+dfsg-113.1.1+dfsg-123.1.1+dfsg-133.1.1+dfsg-14
Show 5 moreShow less
3.1.1+dfsg-15~exp3.1.1+dfsg-93.2.0+dfsg-13.2.0+dfsg-1~exp3.2.0+dfsg-2
 None known
openbabel
Debian:13
 All versions, plus listed versions
3.1.1+dfsg-123.1.1+dfsg-133.1.1+dfsg-143.1.1+dfsg-15~exp3.2.0+dfsg-13.2.0+dfsg-1~exp3.2.0+dfsg-2
 None known
openbabel
Debian:14
 All versions, plus listed versions
3.1.1+dfsg-123.1.1+dfsg-133.1.1+dfsg-143.1.1+dfsg-15~exp3.2.0+dfsg-13.2.0+dfsg-1~exp3.2.0+dfsg-2
 None known
openbabel
PyPI
 before 3.2.0, plus listed versions
1.81.8.11.8.21.8.31.8.4
Show 6 moreShow less
2.4.02.4.13.0.03.0.0a13.1.13.1.1.1
3.2.0
openbabel
Ubuntu:16.04:LTS
 All versions, plus listed versions
2.3.2+dfsg-2.22.3.2+dfsg-2.2build1
 None known
openbabel
Ubuntu:18.04:LTS
 All versions, plus listed versions
2.3.2+dfsg-3build1
 None known
openbabel
Ubuntu:20.04:LTS
 All versions, plus listed versions
2.4.1+dfsg-32.4.1+dfsg-3build12.4.1+dfsg-5.12.4.1+dfsg-63.0.0+dfsg-33.0.0+dfsg-3ubuntu3
 None known
openbabel
Ubuntu:22.04:LTS
 All versions, plus listed versions
3.1.1+dfsg-6ubuntu13.1.1+dfsg-6ubuntu5
 None known
openbabel
Ubuntu:24.04:LTS
 All versions, plus listed versions
3.1.1+dfsg-9build23.1.1+dfsg-9ubuntu13.1.1+dfsg-9ubuntu23.1.1+dfsg-9ubuntu43.1.1+dfsg-9ubuntu5
 None known
Show 4 moreShow less
Affected packages
PackageAffectedFixed
openbabel
Ubuntu:25.10
 All versions, plus listed versions
3.1.1+dfsg-11ubuntu33.1.1+dfsg-11ubuntu4
 None known
openbabel
Ubuntu:26.10
 All versions, plus listed versions
3.1.1+dfsg-11ubuntu53.1.1+dfsg-14ubuntu2
 None known
openbabel
Ubuntu:26.04:LTS
 All versions, plus listed versions
3.1.1+dfsg-11ubuntu43.1.1+dfsg-11ubuntu5
 None known
openbabel
openSUSE:Leap 16.0
From an advisory covering 23 CVEs
 before 3.2.0-bp160.1.1
3.2.0-bp160.1.1

History

History
RecordedChangedSources
affected, facts
affectedOSV
affected
first indexedCVE List, EUVD, GitHub Advisories, NVD, OSV

Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.

In short

CVE-2022-46290 is a critical vulnerability (CVSS 9.8) in Open Babel Babel, published July 21, 2023. No source lists public exploit code. EPSS puts the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days at 0.80%, the 56th percentile. Fixed in openbabel 3.2.0.

References

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