Buffer overflow in Cacalabs Libcaca

CVE-2026-42046

libcaca is a colour ASCII art library. In 0.99.beta20 and earlier, an integer overflow vulnerability in libcaca's canvas import functionality allows an attacker to cause a controlled heap out-of-bounds write (heap overflow) by supplying a crafted file in the "caca" format. Depending on the build configuration and memory allocator, this may lead to memory corruption or remote code execution. This is the same vulnerability as CVE-2021-3410 but the fix at that time was not fully correct. Commit fb77acff9ba6bb01d53940da34fb10f20b156a23 fixes this vulnerability.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.003 (23.3th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 23rd percentile — 23.3% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-42046: held from 0.002 to 0.003.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.003 · change: +0.001

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-42046?
CVE-2026-42046 is a high-severity vulnerability in Cacalabs Libcaca, classified under Heap-based Buffer Overflow. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2026-05-11.
How severe is CVE-2026-42046?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.