Critical 9.8Published Mar 18, 2026

CVE-2026-31972SAMtools is a program for reading, manipulating and writing bioinformatics file formats.

Updated under an hour ago (2026-10-19 09:40 UTC)

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No exploitation reported and no EPSS estimate yet.

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Every CVE for samtools

Exploited in the last 30 days

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: 9.8 CRITICAL (v3.1, NVD)CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weakness (CWE): CWE-416
Known exploited: Not in CISA's KEV catalog
EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days): Not loaded for this CVE
Assigned by: Not given
NVD analysis: Analyzed
Record last updated: Jun 17, 2026
First seen by InfoSec Signals: Oct 9, 2026

Affected products

Affected products

samtools samtools samtools:samtools	before 1.21.1	NVD

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

The CVE record on cve.org NVD's entry

The CVE record is authoritative. Products marked “from the name” were identified from the CNA's free-text names, not a CPE, and are matched less certainly. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.