Kovid Goyal Kitty up to 0.48.x Drag Source Path kitty/dnd.c drag_remote_file_data use after free

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as problematic has been found in Kovid Goyal Kitty up to 0.48.x. This issue affects the function drag_remote_file_data of the file kitty/dnd.c of the component Drag Source Path. The manipulation leads to use after free. This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2026-95834. The attack needs to be performed locally. There is not any exploit available. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Kovid Goyal Kitty up to 0.48.x. It has been rated as problematic. This issue affects the function drag_remote_file_data of the file kitty/dnd.c of the component Drag Source Path. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a use after free vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-416. Referencing memory after it has been freed can cause a program to crash, use unexpected values, or execute code. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

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.

The advisory is shared at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-95834 since 09/22/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. An attack has to be approached locally. Technical details are known, but no exploit is available.

Upgrading to version 0.49.0 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch b54bfbb4f85f992edca9b04f5c0c2612454eec23 is able to eliminate this problem. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

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

Productinfo

Vendor

• Kovid Goyal

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
• 0.47
• 0.48

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

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Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

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