Buffer overflow in Vim

CVE-2026-57455

Vim is an open source, command line text editor. Prior to 9.2.0698, the single-byte branch of spell_soundfold_sofo() in src/spell.c translates a word through a spell file's SOFO (sound-folding) byte map into a caller-owned result buffer. Its copy loop advances the output index ri with no upper bound and terminates only on the input NUL, writing one byte per input byte into the MAXWLEN-element stack buffer the caller provides. A word longer than MAXWLEN, passed to soundfold() (or reached via sound-based spell suggestion) while a SOFO-based spell language is active, therefore writes past the end of that buffer. This is a stack out-of-bounds write that corrupts the call frame and crashes the editor. This vulnerability is fixed in 9.2.0698.

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: 0.001 (1.6th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 2nd percentile — 1.6% 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-2026-57455: held from 0.001 to 0.001.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.001 · newest: 0.001 · change: 0.000

Affected products

  • Vim — versions < 9.2.0698

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-57455?
CVE-2026-57455 is a high-severity vulnerability in Vim, classified under Out-of-bounds Write. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2026-06-25.
How severe is CVE-2026-57455?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.