CVE-2026-80430
Improper link resolution in the kitty drag and drop protocol allows a client to create files outside the staging directory
- Published
- Updated
- Reserved
- Assigned by
- Secur0
Description
Improper Link Resolution Before File Access in the drag source staging 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 create files and directories at paths outside the staging directory, because subdir_data_for_drag() in kitty/dnd.c resolves a descendant of the staged item tree by constructing a path string and opening it with safe_open(path, O_DIRECTORY | O_RDONLY, 0) rather than by walking the tree one component at a time, so a client that declares two entries with the same name, the first a symlink whose target is an arbitrary absolute path and the second a directory, causes mkdirat() to fail with EEXIST, which the code ignores, and causes the subsequent path resolution to follow the symlink and return a directory descriptor outside the staging directory, which is then passed as the dirfd argument to add_payload() and used for every further create operation on that item and its descendants. Entry names are sanitised against path separators and dot components, but symlink targets are not validated. Files are created with O_CREAT | O_WRONLY | O_EXCL at mode 0644, so existing files cannot be overwritten, and directories are created with mkdirat() at mode 0755, so the attacker can create intermediate directories that did not previously exist. This results in the creation of files and directories at any path writable by the user running kitty, provided the symlink target is an existing directory.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secur0CNA (assigner) | 4.0 | Medium4.6 | CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N |
| NVDNVD · Awaiting Analysis | 4.0 | Medium4.6 | CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.15% · top 95% of all CVEs (6 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 4.6.
Weakness
Affected products
- affected 0.47.0 – < 0.49.0
What to do
Solution: Upgrade to kitty 0.49.0 or later.
References (4)
- https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/commit/554908ed0b4d010cf9821c75449c7f7c79a6170a (opens in a new tab)patch
- https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/commit/3c3133d3399257492347f535d8d191680803b25d (opens in a new tab)related
- https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/releases/tag/v0.49.0 (opens in a new tab)release-notes
- https://secur0.com/en/cna/cve-list/cve-2026-80430-kitty-dnd-symlink-traversal (opens in a new tab)third-party-advisorytechnical-description
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://trackcve.app/cve/CVE-2026-80430)Record last updated .