CVE-2026-32249 NFA regex engine NULL pointer dereference affects Vim < 9.2.0137

Medium 5.3 Published Updated

A NULL pointer dereference in Vim's NFA regex engine allows attackers to cause a segmentation fault and crash the application via crafted regex patterns.

Exploited in the wild
Not known
Login needed
Not needed
Attackable
Local or same network only
Victim action needed
A user has to click or open something
Fix
Available

What is CVE-2026-32249?

CVE-2026-32249 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Vim Vim, published on 12 Mar 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

Official description

Vim is an open source, command line text editor. From 9.1.0011 to before 9.2.0137, Vim's NFA regex compiler, when encountering a collection containing a combining character as the endpoint of a character range (e.g. [0-0\u05bb]), incorrectly emits the composing bytes of that character as separate NFA states. This corrupts the NFA postfix stack, resulting in NFA_START_COLL having a NULL out1 pointer. When nfa_max_width() subsequently traverses the compiled NFA to estimate match width for the look-behind assertion, it dereferences state->out1->out without a NULL check, causing a segmentation fault. This vulnerability is fixed in 9.2.0137.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-32249?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Vim Vim.

How do I fix CVE-2026-32249?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Is CVE-2026-32249 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-32249 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Vim Vim vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as ALPINE-CVE-2026-32249, AZL-79845, BELL-CVE-2026-32249, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-32249, ECHO-fb0d-f99a-50a5, GHSA-9phh-423r-778r and 2 more.

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