CVE-2026-7838

UltraVNC viewer heap buffer overflow via integer overflow in RFB connection-failure reason length

HIGH
8.8
CVSS Score
Published: July 1, 2026 at 03:33 AM UTC
Updated: October 25, 2026 at 05:10 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorUltraVNC

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Severity
HIGH8.8
Exploit prediction
EPSS 2%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

UltraVNC viewer through 1.8.2.2 contains an integer overflow leading to a heap buffer overflow in the RFB protocol failure-response parsing path. In vncviewer/ClientConnection.cpp, the 4-byte network-supplied reasonLen field (type CARD32) is passed as reasonLen+1 to CheckBufferSize(). Because both operands are unsigned 32-bit, a reasonLen of 0xFFFFFFFF overflows to 0, causing CheckBufferSize to allocate only 256 bytes. The subsequent ReadString(m_netbuf, reasonLen) call then performs ReadExact for the original 4 GiB length into that 256-byte heap buffer. This overflow is reachable via rfbConnFailed (auth-scheme negotiation) and rfbVncAuthFailed (post-handshake) message types without successful authentication. A malicious VNC server, or any man-in-the-middle on the RFB stream, can trigger this condition when the victim viewer connects, potentially resulting in remote code execution as the user running the viewer. The crash was confirmed with AddressSanitizer on a portable reproduction harness (heap-buffer-overflow WRITE at offset 256).

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v ≤ 1.8.2.2

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

Patch and advisory references

References (3)

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatableTotal impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

8.8HIGHsecurin
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-190CWE-787

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