Improper link resolution in the kitty drag and drop protocol allows a client to create files outside the staging directory

MITRE NVD CVE.ORG JSON API

Summary

CVECVE-2026-80430
StatePUBLISHED
AssignerSecur0
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-09-25 14:17:19 UTC
Updated2026-09-25 16:17:27 UTC
DescriptionImproper 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.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v4.0 4.6 MEDIUM from 4daa8cea-433a-44bd-9456-53b127fc289a

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: 0.001550000 probability, percentile 0.039220000 (date 2026-09-27)

Problem Types: CWE-59 | CWE-59 CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access ('Link Following')

VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
4.04daa8cea-433a-44bd-9456-53b127fc289aSecondary4.6MEDIUMCVSS: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/C...
4.0CNACVSS4.6MEDIUMCVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N

CVSS v4.0 Breakdown

Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Attack Requirements
None
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
Active
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
None
Sub Conf.
None
Sub Integrity
Low
Sub Availability
None

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

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Kovid Goyal Kitty affected 0.47.0 0.49.0 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/commit/554908ed0b4d010cf9821c75449c7f7c79a6170a 4daa8cea-433a-44bd-9456-53b127fc289a github.com
secur0.com/en/cna/cve-list/cve-2026-80430-kitty-dnd-symlink-traversal 4daa8cea-433a-44bd-9456-53b127fc289a secur0.com
github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/commit/3c3133d3399257492347f535d8d191680803b25d 4daa8cea-433a-44bd-9456-53b127fc289a github.com
github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/releases/tag/v0.49.0 4daa8cea-433a-44bd-9456-53b127fc289a github.com
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

Vendor Comments And Credit

Discovery Credit

CNA: Darío Rivas Quero (en)

CNA: Cristian Fernández Cornejo (en)

CNA: Xoán M. Otero Jorge (en)

CNA: Secur0 CNA (en)

CNA: Kovid Goyal (en)

Additional Advisory Data

Solutions

CNA: Upgrade to kitty 0.49.0 or later.

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