Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-44461 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-44461 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-44461?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 8.6, published 28 May 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Zed Industries Zed < 0.227.1.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-44461?
- A patch was published on 2026-05-28: Fixed in version 0.227.1 Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-44461 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in a network appliance.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-44461?
- Check whether you run Zed Industries Zed at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
An OS command injection vulnerability exists in Zed's SSH and WSL remote command builders. When establishing a remote session, Zed constructs a shell command string using 'exec env' but fails to quote or validate environment variable keys (though it does quote the values). An attacker can exploit this by placing a malicious '.zed/settings.json' file in a repository that defines a terminal environment key containing shell expansions, such as '$(command)'. When a victim opens the project and launches a terminal, the remote shell evaluates the expansion, leading to arbitrary code execution under the victim's account. The issue is fixed in version 0.227.1 by implementing strict validation for environment variable keys.
Affected products
- Zed Industries Zed < 0.227.1
Timeline
- 2026-05-08: disclosed: Vulnerability reported to Zed team via GitHub Advisory
- 2026-05-28: advisory: CVE-2026-44461 published
- 2026-05-28: patched: Fixed in version 0.227.1