CVE-2026-65612 Shell Command Injection in nnn
An attacker can execute arbitrary shell commands by tricking a user into opening a maliciously named file in the nnn file manager.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-65612?
CVE-2026-65612 is a medium-severity command injection vulnerability in nnn, published on 19 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Official description
nnn does not sanitize the filename variable. An attacker can place a file with a crafted name on a shared filesystem, removable media, or inside an extracted archive whose name contains a single quote followed by shell syntax. If the victim navigates to that file and opens it with preview-tabbed, the filename is embedded into the generated shell command and the injected payload executes with the privileges of the nnn process.
Maintainer of this project was notified about this vulnerability. It might has been addressed, but the maintainer did not provide a vulnerable version range. Only version 5.2 was tested and confirmed as vulnerable.
Weakness: CWE-78
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-65612?
How do I fix CVE-2026-65612?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-65612 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade, and pass arguments to programs as a list instead of through a shell. More about Command injection.
Is CVE-2026-65612 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-65612 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2026-65612, GHSA-mxcx-xvcg-f843, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-65612.