CVE-2026-54055
MediumCVSS 5.0Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk0th percentile - higher than 0% of all known CVEs
Summary
In versions prior to 0.47.2, a local privilege escalation vulnerability exists in Kitty's file transmission protocol. A child process running in the terminal can write to arbitrary files on the filesystem by exploiting a TOCTOU race condition between symlink validation and file creation.
Risk Assessment
This vulnerability may lead to unauthorized access to system files, posing a serious threat to data integrity and system security.
Recommendation
It is recommended to upgrade to version 0.47.2 or later to mitigate this vulnerability.
Other vulnerabilities in Kitty terminal
See all- CVE-2026-54057High
Kitty is a cross-platform GPU based terminal. In versions prior to 0.47.3, kitty's OSC 21 (color-control) query reply reflects attacker-controlled bytes, including newlines, into the shell's input without sanitization.
- CVE-2026-54056High
In versions 0.47.0 and 0.47.1 of the Kitty terminal, the `kitten dnd` feature can allow a malicious remote drag-and-drop source to overwrite or truncate arbitrary files writable by the local kitty user. The issue arises from the lack of de-duplication of filenames on case-sensitive filesystems.
- CVE-2026-42851High
Kitty is a cross-platform GPU based terminal. In versions prior to 0.47.0, a program able to write bytes to a kitty terminal can cause kitty to execute attacker-supplied Python inside the running kitty process with the user's full privileges.
- CVE-2026-42850High
In versions prior to 0.47.0 of the Kitty terminal, it is possible to inject commands into the subshell through a Kitty error. A special escape code causes Kitty to return an error that is not properly escaped and is correctly echoed back to the terminal, allowing it to be executed by the shell in use.
Original NVD description (English source)
Kitty is a cross-platform GPU based terminal. In versions prior to 0.47.2, a local privilege escalation vulnerability exists in kitty's file transmission protocol where a child process running in the terminal can write to arbitrary files on the filesystem by exploiting a TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) race condition between symlink validation and file creation. The `os.open()` call used to create files does not use `O_NOFOLLOW`, allowing an attacker to create a symlink between the initial stat check and the actual file open, causing the write to follow the symlink to an arbitrary destination. Version 0.47.2 fixes the issue.