High severity · published Jun 25, 2026
CVE-2026-55693
Vim: Out-of-bounds Write in Spell File Word Count
7.8
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Vim is an open source, command line text editor. Prior to 9.2.0653, the tree_count_words() function in src/spellfile.c fills in the word-count fields of a spell-file word trie by walking it iteratively with a depth counter. The counter is bounded only by the trie structure itself; it is never checked against the size of the fixed MAXWLEN-element stack arrays it indexes (arridx[], curi[], wordcount[]). A crafted .spl/.sug file pair, loaded when the user invokes spell suggestion, can drive the descent arbitrarily deep, so the function writes past the end of those arrays. This is a stack out-of-bounds write that corrupts the call frame and crashes the editor. This vulnerability is fixed in 9.2.0653.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 2% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
VI
vim · vim
< 9.2.0653 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-55693
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-55693
Patch
https://github.com/vim/vim/commit/a80874d9b84a01040e3d1aef2d4a59e1934dafb7
Product
https://github.com/vim/vim/releases/tag/v9.2.0653
Vendor Advisory
https://github.com/vim/vim/security/advisories/GHSA-wgh4-64f7-q3jq
More from vim
9.8
CVE-2020-20703
Buffer Overflow vulnerability in VIM v.8.1.2135 allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code via the operand parameter
9.8
CVE-2022-3520
Heap-based Buffer Overflow in GitHub repository vim/vim prior to 9.0.0765
9.8
CVE-2022-0318
Heap-based Buffer Overflow in vim/vim prior to 8.2
9.8
CVE-2017-6350
An integer overflow at an unserialize_uep memory allocation site would occur for vim before patch 8.0.0378, if it does not properly validate values for tree length when reading a…
9.8
CVE-2017-6349
An integer overflow at a u_read_undo memory allocation site would occur for vim before patch 8.0.0377, if it does not properly validate values for tree length when reading a…
