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.
Analysis and contextual insights are available on OpenCVE Cloud.
Remediation
Vendor Solution
Upgrade to kitty 0.49.0 or later.
Tracking
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Advisories
No advisories yet.
References
History
Fri, 25 Sep 2026 13:45:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | |
| Title | Out-of-bounds write in the kitty text sizing protocol allows termination of the terminal process | |
| First Time appeared |
Kovidgoyal
Kovidgoyal kitty |
|
| Weaknesses | CWE-787 | |
| CPEs | cpe:2.3:a:kovidgoyal:kitty:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | |
| Vendors & Products |
Kovidgoyal
Kovidgoyal kitty |
|
| References |
| |
| Metrics |
cvssV4_0
|
Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: Secur0
Published:
Updated: 2026-09-25T15:07:45.536Z
Reserved: 2026-08-26T10:49:01.410Z
Link: CVE-2026-80431
No data.
Status : Received
Published: 2026-09-25T14:17:19.253
Modified: 2026-09-25T16:17:27.880
Link: CVE-2026-80431
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
Updated: 2026-09-25T16:45:08Z
Weaknesses
-
CWE-787
Out-of-bounds Write