Buffer overflow in Pointcloudlibrary Pcl

CVE-2025-4638

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.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

EPSS: 0.005 (37.8th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-4638?
CVE-2025-4638 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Pointcloudlibrary Pcl, classified under Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2025-05-14.
How severe is CVE-2025-4638?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.