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

Type: advisorySource: Official CVE List1 source record

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.

Announced Source revision 1
Original source ↗

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
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