CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-26197

HighCVSS 7.5
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.26%

17th percentile - higher than 17% of all known CVEs

Summary

The HDF5 library is vulnerable to an out-of-bounds read when a file is maliciously crafted – the array datatype size, element count, and element size are inconsistent. The vulnerability only occurs in deliberately altered files, not in normal usage.

Risk Assessment

An attacker supplying a crafted HDF5 file can cause application crashes or memory data leaks. Risk applies to systems processing untrusted data.

Recommendation

Validate HDF5 file integrity before processing. Consider using data consistency checking tools.

Other vulnerabilities in HDF5

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

HDF5 is a high-performance library and a file format specification that implements the HDF5 data model. If a file is corrupted such that an array datatype's size, the number of elements, and the element size are not in agreement it can trigger an out of bounds read. The array datatype stores the full size of the datatype (`dt->shared->size`) separately from the number of elements (`dt->shared->u.array.nelem`) and the element size (`dt->shared->parent->shared->size`). If any one of these are corrupted so that they don't align with the others (element size * nelem = full size), it can lead to an out of bounds read. Depending on what is corrupted, it can alter the type of out of bounds read triggered. The vulnerability is present only in files that have been maliciously altered, as its generally not possible to independently alter the full size of the datatype, the element count and the element size. As such, this is only present if a malicious actor is altering files, and won't appear in regular usage.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS