kovidgoyal kitty up to 0.46.x command injection

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, was found in kovidgoyal kitty up to 0.46.x. This affects an unknown function. Executing a manipulation can lead to command injection. This vulnerability appears as CVE-2026-42850. The attack may be performed from remote. There is no available exploit. You should upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in kovidgoyal kitty up to 0.46.x. It has been declared as critical. This vulnerability affects some unknown functionality. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a command injection vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-77. The product constructs all or part of a command using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the intended command when it is sent to a downstream component. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

Kitty is a cross-platform GPU based terminal. In versions prior to 0.47.0, it is possible to inject commands within the subshell through kitty error. A special escape code will make kitty return an error, this error is not escaped and will be correctly echoed back to the terminal with CRLF, as such it will be run by the shell in use. To exploit this bug, the victim must use a netcat or a similar program to connect to the attacker, or else listening for someone to connect. Once this condition is set, an attacker could pwn the computer of the victim using a special kitty's escape code that will run a command in the shell in use. Version 04.7.0 fixes the issue.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-42850 since 04/30/2026. The exploitation appears to be difficult. The attack can be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is required for a successful exploitation. Successful exploitation requires user interaction by the victim. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1202.

Upgrading to version 0.47.0 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at EUVD (EUVD-2026-36553). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Vendor

• kovidgoyal

Name

• kitty

Version

• 0.1
• 0.2
• 0.3
• 0.4
• 0.5
• 0.6
• 0.7
• 0.8
• 0.9
• 0.10
• 0.11
• 0.12
• 0.13
• 0.14
• 0.15
• 0.16
• 0.17
• 0.18
• 0.19
• 0.20
• 0.21
• 0.22
• 0.23
• 0.24
• 0.25
• 0.26
• 0.27
• 0.28
• 0.29
• 0.30
• 0.31
• 0.32
• 0.33
• 0.34
• 0.35
• 0.36
• 0.37
• 0.38
• 0.39
• 0.40
• 0.41
• 0.42
• 0.43
• 0.44
• 0.45
• 0.46

Website

• Product: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/

CPE 2.3info

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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