All vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-80431

Out-of-bounds write in the kitty text sizing protocol allows termination of the terminal process

Kovid Goyal kitty
CVSS
6.8Medium
ExploitationNo known exploitationNot in CISA KEV, which does not prove it is unexploitedCISA KEV
Exploit odds (EPSS)0.14%Chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days, higher than 2% of CVEs. Scored 23 Oct 2026FIRST EPSS
Fixed in0.49.0Fixed versionCVE List
Published25 Sep 2026Updated 25 Sep 2026CVE List

What fixes it

A fixed version on one release line is not the upgrade target for every line. Check your exact version and any vendor backports.

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.

Text from CVE List

Affected versions 1

  • kittyaffected: 0.40.0 before 0.49.0CVE List

References 3