vim up to 9.1.1002 Visual Mode heap-based overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability described as critical has been identified in vim up to 9.1.1002. Affected is an unknown function of the component Visual Mode. Executing a manipulation can lead to heap-based overflow. This vulnerability appears as CVE-2025-22134. The attack requires local access. There is no available exploit. Upgrading the affected component is recommended.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in vim up to 9.1.1002. This vulnerability affects an unknown code block of the component Visual Mode. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a heap-based overflow vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-122. A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc(). As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

When switching to other buffers using the :all command and visual mode still being active, this may cause a heap-buffer overflow, because Vim does not properly end visual mode and therefore may try to access beyond the end of a line in a buffer. In Patch 9.1.1003 Vim will correctly reset the visual mode before opening other windows and buffers and therefore fix this bug. In addition it does verify that it won't try to access a position if the position is greater than the corresponding buffer line. Impact is medium since the user must have switched on visual mode when executing the :all ex command. The Vim project would like to thank github user gandalf4a for reporting this issue. The issue has been fixed as of Vim patch v9.1.1003

The advisory is shared for download at seclists.org. This vulnerability was named CVE-2025-22134. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack needs to be approached locally. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 214215 (Vim 9.1.1003 (GHSA-5rgf-26wj-48v8)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 9.1.1003 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (214215). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Word Processing Software

Name

• vim

Version

• 9.1.1002

License

• open-source

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CPE 2.2info

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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