Ghostty, a cross‑platform terminal emulator, accepts control characters such as Ctrl+C (0x03) in pasted or dragged text. When these characters reach the terminal, they can trigger arbitrary command execution in any shell that interprets them, representing a CWE‑78 condition of executable code injection through improper sanitization. The flaw is user‑mediated; an attacker must first convince the user to copy or drop malicious content, and because the offending characters are invisible in most graphical interfaces, the attacker can remain undetected until the command runs, potentially compromising the user’s system.

All releases of Ghostty before the patch in v1.3.0 are vulnerable. The product is the same across platforms, as Ghostty is cross‑platform; any older version installed on Windows, macOS, or Linux exposes the same issue if it processes pasted or dropped text.

The CVSS score of 6.3 places the issue in the medium severity range, while the EPSS score below 1% indicates a low current exploitation probability and it is not listed in the CISA KEV catalog. Nonetheless, the attack vector requires user interaction via paste or drag‑and‑drop; invisible control characters can bypass visual inspection, and once triggered an attacker can execute arbitrary commands within the shell context. The threat therefore hinges on user awareness and adequate mitigation of paste handling.