CVE-2026-9535
Description
A flaw was found in VTK. An out-of-bounds read vulnerability in the vtkChacoReader component occurs when processing graph data. By supplying a specially crafted Chaco file, an attacker can trigger an application crash, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS), or potentially expose sensitive memory contents.
Statement
This vulnerability is assessed as Moderate rather than Important because triggering the flaw requires user interaction to process an untrusted dataset, limiting the immediate threat to an application crash or localized memory disclosure. VTK is not distributed in core Red Hat Enterprise Linux channels and is primarily consumed via community repositories such as EPEL for specialized visualization tasks. Because the affected parsing routines execute strictly within the context of the user running the visualization tool, the flaw cannot be leveraged for privilege escalation or remote code execution by default.
Mitigation
No fixed version is available. Avoid processing untrusted Chaco .graph files with vtkChacoReader-based applications (e.g. ParaView); do not open Chaco files from untrusted sources until a fixed VTK release is available.
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Memory
An attacker could get secret values such as cryptographic keys, PII, memory addresses, or other information that could be used in additional attacks.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism
Out-of-bounds memory could contain memory addresses or other information that can be used to bypass ASLR and other protection mechanisms in order to improve the reliability of exploiting a separate weakness for code execution.
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
An attacker could cause a segmentation fault or crash by causing memory to be read outside of the bounds of the buffer. This is especially likely when the code reads a variable amount of data and assumes that a sentinel exists to stop the read operation, such as a NUL in a string.
Other
Technical Impact: Varies by Context
The read operation could produce other undefined or unexpected results.
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