GHSA-55j6-rjhx-hwfh Open Babel has NULL pointer dereference in CACAO CacaoFormat::SetHilderbrandt

• PyPI openbabel: < 3.2.0 → fixed in 3.2.0

Summary A memory-safety vulnerability in Open Babel's CACAO parser caused a NULL pointer dereference when reading a crafted input file. Details The flaw was in `CacaoFormat::SetHilderbrandt`. A malformed input caused the parser to dereference a NULL pointer while applying the Hilderbrandt transformation. 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 CACAO 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/ecaed96f Originally reported as #2827; fixes consolidated in #2913. 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 via OSS-Fuzz.