Out-of-bounds write in the kitty text sizing protocol allows termination of the terminal process
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.
CVE-2026-80431
Primary source · Revision 1
Imported from structured advisory data. Source references identify upstream records or fields; verify affected versions and your deployed configuration.
Security context
Source reference: cve:CVE-2026-80431
kitty
Source reference: /containers/cna/affected/0/product
- Affected versions
- Not stated in this record
- Fixed versions
- Not stated in this record
- Prerequisites
- Not stated in this record
Structured affected-version data
Original package identities and version rules from this source.
[
{
"repo": "https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty",
"vendor": "Kovid Goyal",
"product": "kitty",
"versions": [
{
"status": "affected",
"version": "0.40.0",
"lessThan": "0.49.0",
"versionType": "semver"
}
],
"programFiles": [
"kitty/screen.c"
],
"defaultStatus": "unaffected"
}
]- Related CVEs
- CVE-2026-80431
Source reference:
/cveMetadata/cveId
Publisher severity
medium
Source reference: /containers/cna/metrics
- Event
- #2118 · Revision 1
- Added to Heist Feed
- Publisher date