CVE-2026-95834 json
Use after free in the kitty drag and drop protocol when a drag source item is aborted mid-transfer
published 2026-09-25 45 d ago modified 2026-09-29 40 d ago also EUVD-2026-87233
- cvss
- 4.6
- version 4.0, CNA
- cisa kev
- Not listed
- not in CISA's catalog
- epss
- 0.1%
- EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 2%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
Use After Free in the drag source 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 cause the terminal to read from and write to freed heap memory, because drag_remote_file_data() in kitty/dnd.c holds a DragRemoteItem pointer into an array it does not own, calls toplevel_data_for_drag() or subdir_data_for_drag(), and then continues to use that pointer. Those helpers, and add_payload() and populate_dir_entries() which they call, report errors through the abrt() macro, which expands to cancel_drag() followed by a plain return, and cancel_drag() calls drag_free_offer(), which frees the array the pointer refers to. The helpers return void, so the caller receives no indication that the teardown happened, and proceeds to call all_children_complete() on the freed pointer, which dereferences it, and then to write through it. That dereference is guarded by a local flag that is set when the request carries no payload and announces no further data, which is the same condition that selects the finalisation block of add_payload(), so the error paths in that block reach it: a create that fails because an entry of the same name already exists, because the client may declare two entries with one name and the create operations use O_CREAT with O_EXCL and symlinkat(), a mkdirat() failure other than EEXIST, and the directory entry allocation paths. Both branches reach it. In the top level branch the caller's pointer is never cleared, so clearing the owning structure's own pointers during teardown does not help. In the sub directory branch subdir_data_for_drag() sets the caller's pointer to NULL on entry and assigns it only after its own last error path, so its own aborts leave the caller with NULL and are stopped by a null check, but it then calls add_payload() with that pointer set, and an abort there leaves the caller holding a freed child node inside the item tree, which drag_free_offer() frees by recursion. This results in undefined behaviour in the terminal process, reachable from the byte stream of any program running in the window.
Patch / fix
- Kovid Goyal kitty 0.49.0
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-2026-95834 updated cvss 7.8
kitty: use after free in the kitty drag and drop protocol when a drag source item is aborted mid-transfer
-
Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat productsnot 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
- none
- Automatable
- no
- Technical impact
- partial
- Assessed
- 44 d ago
Exploit prediction
0.13% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).
CVSS scores
| assigned by | version | score | vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | 4.0 | 4.6 | CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N |
| CNA | 4.0 | 4.6 | CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X |
Affected products
- Kovid Goyal kitty
Classification
- Weakness
-
- CWE-416 Use After Free
References
-
github.com
/kovidgoyal/kitty/commit/b54bfbb4f85f992edca9b04f5c0c2612454eec23
patch
-
github.com
/kovidgoyal/kitty/releases/tag/v0.49.0
release-notes
-
secur0.com
/en/cna/cve-list/cve-2026-95834-kitty-dnd-use-after-free
third-party-advisory, technical-description
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2026-95834
- NVD CVE-2026-95834
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