CVE-2026-81334darknet through 6.0 Out-of-Bounds Read and Write via Unchecked Layer Index in .cfg Parser

Official description

darknet subscripts its layer array with an index taken from a configuration file without checking it against the array's length. The array is allocated in src-lib/darknet_network.cpp as xcalloc(net.n, sizeof(Darknet::Layer)), sized to exactly the number of layer sections the file declares. The shortcut, scale_channels and sam sections supply that index through their from field and the route section through its layers field, and parse_shortcut_section in src-lib/darknet_cfg.cpp reads net.layers[index].outputs with no bounds check, which reads past the allocation. The dispatch loop in create_network then reuses the same index to assign net.layers[l.index].use_bin_output and net.layers[l.index].keep_delta_gpu, writing past the allocation at an offset the file controls, with a fixed one-byte value. Parsing a crafted configuration file is sufficient: the parse runs before any weights file is opened and needs no non-default option, so the result is a reliable crash and a write whose location, though not its value, is chosen by whoever supplied the file.

Affected products (as reported)

References

• https://github.com/hank-ai/darknet product
• https://github.com/hank-ai/darknet/blob/v6.0/src-lib/darknet_cfg.cpp technical-description
• https://github.com/hank-ai/darknet/blob/v6.0/src-lib/darknet_network.cpp technical-description
• VulnCheck Advisory: darknet through 6.0 Out-of-Bounds Read and Write via Unchecked Layer Index in .cfg Parser third-party-advisory