CVE-2026-80431
Out-of-bounds write in the kitty text sizing protocol allows termination of the terminal process
- State
- Published
- Severity
- 6.8 Medium
- Published
- Sep 25, 2026
- Updated
- Sep 25, 2026
- Reserved
- Aug 26, 2026
Description
Out-of-bounds Write in the natural width branch of the text sizing protocol in kitty from 0.40.0 before 0.49.0 allows a program writing to the terminal to write past the end of a fixed-size buffer, because screen_handle_multicell_command() in kitty/screen.c appends each codepoint of a grapheme cluster with lc.chars[lc.count++] = ch without any capacity check, while lc is declared by the RAII_ListOfChars macro as a four-element char_type array in the function's stack frame, so an OSC 66 escape code whose payload carries a grapheme cluster longer than four codepoints writes beyond that buffer, one 32-bit value per additional codepoint, in the order the codepoints appear. Where the cluster is preceded in the same payload by a sequence that causes an intermediate flush, the buffer is first migrated to the heap by ensure_space_for_chars() and the write occurs past the heap allocation instead. This results in termination of the kitty process and therefore of all its windows, tabs and child processes.
Scores
| CVSS | Score | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | 6.8 Medium | CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N | Secur0 |
Weaknesses
- CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write
Affected Products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
kittyKovid Goyal |
|
References
- https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/commit/7d2fbaadcc2b1eeeef89bd875ec622b42362574bpatch
- https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/releases/tag/v0.49.0release-notes
- https://secur0.com/en/cna/cve-list/cve-2026-80431-kitty-text-sizing-out-of-bounds-writethird-party-advisorytechnical-description
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