CVE-2026-7838

/// Technical 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 h

/// Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

/// References