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Fencer Intel
medium 5.0

CVE-2026-54055 json

Kitty has an Arbitrary File Write via Symlink Race Condition in File Transmission Protocol

published 4mo ago modified 16d ago also EUVD-2026-36556

cvss
5.0
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 0%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • kitty_project kitty 0.47.2
  • kovidgoyal kitty 0.47.2
  • kitty Debian 13 0.41.1-2+deb13u2
  • kitty Debian 14 0.47.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-54055

  • kitty Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS 0.32.2-1ubuntu0.4+esm2
  • kitty Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS 0.45.0-1ubuntu0.1~esm2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-54055

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-54055 updated cvss 6.3

kitty: Kitty: Local privilege escalation via TOCTOU race condition in file transmission protocol

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
4mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.07% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 0% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/security/advisories/GHSA-q446-x7q6-vcxh referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L

Affected products

  • kovidgoyal kitty

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
  • CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
  • CWE-426 Untrusted Search Path

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.