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OpenAdvisories
High · 7.4 CVE-2026-42850 EUVD-2026-36553

Kitty has a shell command injection

Published Jun 12, 2026 · Updated Jun 16, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
kovidgoyal kitty < 0.47.0 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 kitty 0.47.0-1 —
Debian 13 kitty 0.41.1-2+deb13u2 —
Debian 12 kitty No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 25.10 kitty No fix yet —
Show 2 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS kitty 0.45.0-1ubuntu0.1~esm2 USN-8763-1
Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS kitty 0.32.2-1ubuntu0.4+esm2 USN-8763-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Leap 16.0 kitty 0.48.2-bp160.1.1 openSUSE-SU-2026:21599-1

Advisories 2

References