Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-51400 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-51400 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-51400?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 8.4, published 4 August 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Vim v9.2.0389 and earlier.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-51400?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-2026-51400 attacked?
- It is attacked with local access, in an operating system.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-51400?
- Check whether you run Vim 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
CVE-2026-51400 is a memory leak (CWE-401) in the vms_fixfilename() function within src/os_vms.c. A static heap buffer allocated during filename processing is never freed during the Vim process lifetime. Repeated invocations—particularly in long-running editing sessions or automated file processing—cause continuous memory accumulation leading to resource exhaustion and denial of service. The attack vector is local; an attacker triggers the vulnerability via filename and path expansion operations on a system where they have file access. No patch information is currently available in the advisory.
Affected products
- Vim Vim v9.2.0389 and earlier
Timeline
- 2026-08-04: disclosed
- other: CVE-2026-51400