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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.0

CVE-2026-54055 json

Kitty has an Arbitrary File Write via Symlink Race Condition in File Transmission Protocol

published 2026-06-12 4 mo ago modified 2026-10-26 14 d ago also EUVD-2026-36556

cvss
5.0
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 0%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Kitty is a cross-platform GPU based terminal. In versions prior to 0.47.2, a local privilege escalation vulnerability exists in kitty's file transmission protocol where a child process running in the terminal can write to arbitrary files on the filesystem by exploiting a TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) race condition between symlink validation and file creation. The `os.open()` call used to create files does not use `O_NOFOLLOW`, allowing an attacker to create a symlink between the initial stat check and the actual file open, causing the write to follow the symlink to an arbitrary destination. Version 0.47.2 fixes the issue.

Patch / fix

  • kovidgoyal kitty 0.47.2
  • kitty Debian 13 0.41.1-2+deb13u2
  • kitty Debian 14 0.47.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-54055

  • kitty Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS 0.32.2-1ubuntu0.4+esm2
  • kitty Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS 0.45.0-1ubuntu0.1~esm2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-54055

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-54055 updated cvss 6.3

kitty: Kitty: Local privilege escalation via TOCTOU race condition in file transmission protocol

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
4 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.07% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 0% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/security/advisories/GHSA-q446-x7q6-vcxh referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L

Affected products

  • kovidgoyal kitty

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
  • CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
  • CWE-426 Untrusted Search Path

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.