CVE-2026-8997: Heap Buffer Overflow in vifm

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.8 v4.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-05-22 · updated 2026-07-23
Weakness: CWE-122

Description

vifm is vulnerable to a heap buffer overflow during the history merge process when saving the state file (vifminfo.json). This flaw occurs because the application lacks a runtime check on the length of history entries in release builds, potentially allowing a crafted long path or command in the history to cause memory corruption or application crashes. Releases from 0.12.1 to 0.14.3 (including) are considered vulnerable. This issue was fixed in commit 23063c7

Affected products

vifm: from 0.12.1 through 0.14.3

References

https://cert.pl/en/posts/2026/05/CVE-2026-8997
https://github.com/vifm/vifm/commit/23063c741f15a85621fd232dfc3ac5b779f6910d

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