Improper link resolution in the kitty drag and drop protocol allows a client to create files outside the staging directory
Improper Link Resolution Before File Access in the drag source staging path of the drag and drop protocol in kitty from 0.47.0 before 0.49.0 allows a program writing to the terminal to create files and directories at paths outside the staging directory, because subdir_data_for_drag() in kitty/dnd.c resolves a descendant of the staged item tree by constructing a path string and opening it with safe_open(path, O_DIRECTORY | O_RDONLY, 0) rather than by walking the tree one component at a time, so a client that declares two entries with the same name, the first a symlink whose target is an arbitrary absolute path and the second a directory, causes mkdirat() to fail with EEXIST, which the code ignores, and causes the subsequent path resolution to follow the symlink and return a directory descriptor outside the staging directory, which is then passed as the dirfd argument to add_payload() and used for every further create operation on that item and its descendants. Entry names are sanitised against path separators and dot components, but symlink targets are not validated. Files are created with O_CREAT | O_WRONLY | O_EXCL at mode 0644, so existing files cannot be overwritten, and directories are created with mkdirat() at mode 0755, so the attacker can create intermediate directories that did not previously exist. This results in the creation of files and directories at any path writable by the user running kitty, provided the symlink target is an existing directory.
CVE-2026-80430
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-2026-80430
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": "0.47.0",
"lessThan": "0.49.0",
"versionType": "semver"
}
],
"programFiles": [
"kitty/dnd.c"
],
"defaultStatus": "unaffected"
}
]- Related CVEs
- CVE-2026-80430
Source reference:
/cveMetadata/cveId
Publisher severity
medium
Source reference: /containers/cna/metrics
- Event
- #2120 · Revision 1
- Added to Heist Feed
- Publisher date