Kitty, a GPU‑based terminal emulator, accepts OSC 21 (color‑control) query replies that may contain arbitrary bytes from an attacker. The reply is forwarded directly to the shell without sanitization, allowing an attacker to insert shell metacharacters such as newlines. This leads to command injection. The weakness corresponds to CWE‑150 and CWE‑94. A successful exploitation would let the attacker execute arbitrary shell commands in the context of the user running kitty. The CVSS score of 7.3 reflects a moderate‑high severity.

The affected product is kovidgoyal:kitty, version 0.47.2 or earlier on all platforms where kitty is distributed. Version 0.47.3 or later applies the patch that validates OSC 21 replies before feeding them to the shell.

The vulnerability is not listed in CISA KEV and no EPSS score is available, so the public exploitation probability is unknown, but the CVSS severity indicates a substantial risk. An attacker would need to deliver a crafted OSC 21 reply to the terminal, which may be possible from a local user or a compromised script. Once the malicious reply is processed, the shell will execute injected commands. Prompt application of the 0.47.3 update mitigates the issue entirely.