What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-48706: Vim has heap-use-after-free at /src/charset.c:1770:12 in skipwhite

• Severity: medium (CVSS 4.7 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2023-11-22 · updated 2026-09-17
• Weakness: CWE-416

Description

Vim is a UNIX editor that, prior to version 9.0.2121, has a heap-use-after-free vulnerability. When executing a `:s` command for the very first time and using a sub-replace-special atom inside the substitution part, it is possible that the recursive `:s` call causes free-ing of memory which may later then be accessed by the initial `:s` command. The user must intentionally execute the payload and the whole process is a bit tricky to do since it seems to work only reliably for the very first :s command. It may also cause a crash of Vim. Version 9.0.2121 contains a fix for this issue.

Affected products

• Fedoraproject Fedora: 38, 39
• Neovim: through 0.9.5
• NetApp Hci Compute Node: all versions
• vim/vim: before 9.0.2121 — fixed in 9.0.2121

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: vim/vim 9.0.2121. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/11/22/3
• https://github.com/gandalf4a/crash_report/blob/main/vim/vim_huaf
• https://github.com/vim/vim/commit/26c11c56888d01e298cd8044caf860f3c26f57bb
• https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/13552
• https://github.com/vim/vim/security/advisories/GHSA-c8qm-x72m-q53q
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/DNMFS3IH74KEMMESOA3EOB6MZ56TWGFF/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/IVA7K73WHQH4KVFDJQ7ELIUD2WK5ZT5E/
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20240105-0001/
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/11/22/3
• https://github.com/gandalf4a/crash_report/blob/main/vim/vim_huaf
• https://github.com/vim/vim/commit/26c11c56888d01e298cd8044caf860f3c26f57bb
• https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/13552

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