High severity · published Jun 11, 2026
CVE-2026-52859
Vim: Out-of-bounds Read in Terminal Screen Snapshot
8.2
CVSS
0.3%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Vim is an open source, command line text editor. Prior to version 9.2.0565, the update_snapshot() function in src/terminal.c copies the visible terminal screen into the scrollback buffer when a snapshot is taken. For each screen cell it walks the cell's chars[] array with no upper bound, stopping only when it encounters a NUL terminator. When a cell legitimately fills all VTERM_MAX_CHARS_PER_CELL (6) slots — a base character plus five combining marks — the bundled libvterm returns the array without a terminating NUL, so the loop reads past the fixed six-element array and appends the out-of-bounds values to a buffer reserved for only six characters. A program whose output is rendered inside a :terminal window can trigger this with a short byte sequence and no Vim scripting, leading to a crash. This issue has been patched in version 9.2.0565.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.3% · higher than 23% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
VI
vim · vim
< 9.2.0565 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-52859
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-52859
Patch
https://github.com/vim/vim/commit/63680c6d3d52477817b49cd1a66e7aabe8a7aa19
Release Notes
https://github.com/vim/vim/releases/tag/v9.2.0565
Vendor Advisory
https://github.com/vim/vim/security/advisories/GHSA-47gw-8gc3-mgcm
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