CVE-2022-46290

Affected: Open Babel

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

PYSEC-2026-2773 — Open Babel has out-of-bounds write in ORCA nAtoms parser (second variant)

Affected: PyPI: openbabel

### 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.

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CVE-2022-46290

PYSEC-2026-2773 — Open Babel has out-of-bounds write in ORCA nAtoms parser (second variant)