CVE-2026-80431
Received Received - Intake

Out-of-bounds Write in Kitty Terminal Emulator

Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-80431, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.

Publication date: 2026-09-25

Last updated on: 2026-09-25

Assigner: Secur0

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.

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Meta Information

Published
2026-09-25
Last Modified
2026-09-25
Generated
2026-09-25
AI Q&A
2026-09-25
EPSS Evaluated
N/A
NVD
EUVD

Affected Vendors & Products

Showing 1 associated CPE
Vendor Product Version / Range
kitty kitty to 0.49.0 (exc)

Helpful Resources

Exploitability

CWE
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KEV
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CWE ID Description
CWE-787 The product writes data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer.

Attack-Flow Graph

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Executive Summary

This is an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the kitty terminal emulator versions 0.40.0 to 0.49.0. It occurs when processing OSC 66 escape codes with grapheme clusters longer than four codepoints. The program writes past a fixed-size buffer in memory, leading to process termination and loss of all windows, tabs, and child processes.

Impact Analysis

An attacker could exploit this by sending a specially crafted escape code to a vulnerable kitty terminal. This would crash the terminal emulator and all associated processes, causing data loss or disruption of terminal-based workflows.

Mitigation Strategies

Update kitty to version 0.49.0 or later to address the out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the text sizing protocol.

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