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Medium · 4.6 CVE-2026-95834 EUVD-2026-87233GHSA-3v4f-mq3r-g3gv

Use after free in the kitty drag and drop protocol when a drag source item is aborted mid-transfer

Published Sep 25, 2026 · Updated Sep 25, 2026 · Assigned by Secur0

Description

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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Kovid Goyal kitty 0.47.0 – < 0.49.0 0.49.0

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 No fix yet —
Debian 13 kitty No fix yet —
Debian 12 kitty No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 kitty No fix yet —
Show 4 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS kitty No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS kitty No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS kitty No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS kitty No fix yet —

References