CVE-2026-26982 | Ghostty affected by arbitrary command execution via control characters in paste and drag-and-drop operations

Ghostty is a cross-platform terminal emulator. Ghostty allows control characters such as 0x03 (Ctrl+C) in pasted and dropped text. These can be used to execute arbitrary commands in some shell environments. This attack requires an attacker to convince the user to copy and paste or drag and drop malicious text. The attack requires user interaction to be triggered, but the dangerous characters are invisible in most GUI environments so it isn't trivially detected, especially if the string contents are complex. Fixed in Ghostty v1.3.0.

Published: 2026-03-10 Last update: 2026-03-13 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2026-26982 is rated Low Risk (27.5/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.03%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2026-26982

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-03-10 0.03%

Full EPSS history (1 record total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2026-26982

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.3 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:L)
Some sensitive info could get out, but not a total data dump.
Integrity (I:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:L)
Might cause slowdowns, glitches, or partial disruption—not a full brick.
2.8 3.4 [email protected]
8.8 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
2.8 5.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2026-26982

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2026-26982

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
ghostty ghostty < 1.3.0 cpe:2.3:a:ghostty:ghostty:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2026-26982

cvelogic Threat Intelligence