CVE-2026-28421

Received Received - Intake

Heap Buffer Overflow in Vim Swap File Recovery Causes Crash

Publication date: 2026-02-27

Last updated on: 2026-03-04

Assigner: GitHub, Inc.

Description

Vim is an open source, command line text editor. Versions prior to 9.2.0077 have a heap-buffer-overflow and a segmentation fault (SEGV) exist in Vim's swap file recovery logic. Both are caused by unvalidated fields read from crafted pointer blocks within a swap file. Version 9.2.0077 fixes the issue.

CVSS Scores

EPSS Scores

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Meta Information

Published

2026-02-27

Last Modified

2026-03-04

Generated

2026-07-06

AI Q&A

2026-02-28

EPSS Evaluated

2026-07-05

NVD

CVE-2026-28421

EUVD

EUVD-2026-9089

Affected Vendors & Products

Vendor	Product	Version / Range
vim	vim	to 9.2.0077 (exc)

Helpful Resources

Exploitability

CWE

KEV

CWE ID	Description
CWE-20	The product receives input or data, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the properties that are required to process the data safely and correctly.
CWE-122	A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc().

Attack-Flow Graph

Executive Summary

This vulnerability exists in Vim, an open source command line text editor, in versions prior to 9.2.0077. It involves a heap-buffer-overflow and a segmentation fault (SEGV) in Vim's swap file recovery logic. These issues are caused by unvalidated fields that are read from specially crafted pointer blocks within a swap file. The problem is fixed in version 9.2.0077.

Impact Analysis

Exploitation of this vulnerability can lead to a heap-buffer-overflow and segmentation fault, which may cause Vim to crash or behave unpredictably. This could potentially be used by an attacker to execute arbitrary code or cause denial of service when recovering swap files.

Compliance Impact

I don't know

Detection Guidance

I don't know

Mitigation Strategies

To mitigate this vulnerability, upgrade Vim to version 9.2.0077 or later, as this version contains the fix for the heap-buffer-overflow and segmentation fault issues in the swap file recovery logic.

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