vim up to 9.2.0073 Emacs-Style Tags File Parser heap-based overflow

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability has been found in vim up to 9.2.0073 and classified as critical. This issue affects some unknown processing of the component Emacs-Style Tags File Parser. This manipulation causes heap-based overflow. This vulnerability appears as CVE-2026-28418. The attack may be initiated remotely. There is no available exploit. The affected component should be upgraded.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in vim up to 9.2.0073. It has been declared as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown part of the component Emacs-Style Tags File Parser. 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. The summary by CVE is:

Vim is an open source, command line text editor. Prior to version 9.2.0074, a heap-based buffer overflow out-of-bounds read exists in Vim's Emacs-style tags file parsing logic. When processing a malformed tags file, Vim can be tricked into reading up to 7 bytes beyond the allocated memory boundary. Version 9.2.0074 fixes the issue.

The advisory is shared at github.com. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2026-28418 since 02/27/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be launched remotely. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 300521 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-28418), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 9.2.0074 eliminates this vulnerability. The upgrade is hosted for download at github.com. Applying a patch is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (300521), EUVD (EUVD-2026-9086) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2026-0556). If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Affected

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Fedora Linux
• Ubuntu Linux
• SUSE Linux
• Oracle Linux
• SUSE openSUSE
• RESF Rocky Linux
• Open Source vim
• Red Hat OpenShift

Productinfo

Type

• Word Processing Software

Name

• vim

Version

• 9.2.0073

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://github.com/vim/vim/

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If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

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