CVE-2026-80430: Improper 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 wr

Improper 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 wr

Improper 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 directo

Description from the National Vulnerability Database, published by 4daa8cea-433a-44bd-9456-53b127fc289a

What it means for a small business

If your business uses kitty, install the vendor's update. If you're not sure whether you use it, ask whoever manages your computers.

How likely is an attack? The Exploit Prediction Scoring System, run by FIRST (the global association of security response teams), puts the odds of this one being exploited in the next 30 days at 0.15%, higher than 4% of CVEs. That’s low, but low isn’t zero, and the odds jump the day someone publishes an exploit. Scored October 29, 2026, updated daily.

Check your own setup

Website check: reads what your site runs from the outside (WordPress version, plugins it can see, old server software) and matches it against this database.
Server check: what your web server says about itself, and whether that version has known flaws.

Sources

Part of the Huttenlocher Technologies vulnerability database, refreshed twice a day from CISA and the NVD. The title, category and plain-language guidance are ours; check the linked record before acting on a detail. This is general guidance, not a review of your systems.

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