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CVE-2026-50538

libvncclient Tight decoder has an attacker-controlled heap out-of-bounds write

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
  • Exploitation: poc
  • Automatable: no
  • Technical impact: total

Summary

LibVNCClient is a library for easy implementation of a VNC client. In versions 0.9.12 through 0.9.15, a malicious (or man-in-the-middle) VNC server can force a connecting `libvncclient` to write attacker-controlled data past the end of its framebuffer. This is an out-of-bounds heap write with attacker-controlled length, contents, and offset. It needs no authentication (the attacker is the server), works in a default build with default settings, and fires from a single `FramebufferUpdate` the moment the victim connects. It crashes any client unconditionally (denial of service); we also demonstrated it overwriting an application callback pointer and redirecting execution to attacker-chosen code (code execution) under the default configuration. Commit 540332be3e0acc566fa64da6f1b4680c72c724dd patches the issue.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. CISA SSVC assessment

    Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total

  3. Record last updated

Affected versions

  • LibVNC libvncserver

    From 0.9.12 · through 0.9.15

References 2

GitHub · LibVNC/libvncserver