CVE-2026-50538

libvncclient Tight decoder has an attacker-controlled heap out-of-bounds write

State
Published
Severity
8.8 High
Published
Aug 21, 2026
Updated
Aug 24, 2026
Reserved
Jun 4, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

LibVNCClient is a library for easy implementation of a VNC client. In versions 0.9.12 through 0.9.15, a malicious (or man-in-the-middle) VNC server can force a connecting `libvncclient` to write attacker-controlled data past the end of its framebuffer. This is an out-of-bounds heap write with attacker-controlled length, contents, and offset. It needs no authentication (the attacker is the server), works in a default build with default settings, and fires from a single `FramebufferUpdate` the moment the victim connects. It crashes any client unconditionally (denial of service); we also demonstrated it overwriting an application callback pointer and redirecting execution to attacker-chosen code (code execution) under the default configuration. Commit 540332be3e0acc566fa64da6f1b4680c72c724dd patches the issue.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.18.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HGitHub_M

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
libvncserverLibVNC
  • >= 0.9.12, <= 0.9.15Affected

References

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