CVE-2026-2661
Published: 18 February 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-2661 is a low-severity Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer (CWE-119) vulnerability in Squirrel-Lang Squirrel. Its CVSS base score is 3.3 (Low).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 1.3th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Likely Mitigating ControlsAI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Ongoing control assessments and code testing (static/dynamic analysis, fuzzing) surface memory buffer restriction failures, which are then remediated before release.
Managed runtimes used by platform-independent applications (e.g., JVM, CLR) enforce memory safety, preventing most buffer overflows that require direct memory manipulation.
Memory protections (e.g., W^X, ASLR) make exploitation of buffer-boundary violations far harder to turn into code execution.
Detects exploitation attempts that produce memory corruption, crashes, or anomalous behavior.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Heap buffer overflow in Squirrel library enables local exploitation to crash the host application, directly mapping to application/system exploitation for endpoint DoS (no RCE or escalation per CVSS).
NVD Description
A security flaw has been discovered in Squirrel up to 3.2. This affects the function SQObjectPtr::operator in the library squirrel/sqobject.h. The manipulation results in heap-based buffer overflow. The attack needs to be approached locally. The exploit has been released to…
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the public and may be used for attacks. The project was informed of the problem early through an issue report but has not responded yet.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2026-2661 is a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the Squirrel scripting language library, specifically affecting the SQObjectPtr::operator function in squirrel/sqobject.h. It impacts Squirrel versions up to and including 3.2 and is associated with CWE-119 (Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer) and CWE-122 (Heap-based Buffer Overflow).
The vulnerability requires local access (AV:L) with low attack complexity (AC:L) and low privileges (PR:L), needing no user interaction (UI:N) and resulting in no scope change (S:U). An attacker can achieve a denial-of-service condition impacting availability (A:L), with no effects on confidentiality or integrity, as reflected in its CVSS v3.1 base score of 3.3.
Advisories indicate the Squirrel project was informed early via GitHub issue #310 (https://github.com/albertodemichelis/squirrel/issues/310) but has not responded or released patches. A proof-of-concept exploit reproduction is publicly available (https://github.com/oneafter/0122/blob/main/i310/repro), and VulDB details the issue (https://vuldb.com/?ctiid.346459, https://vuldb.com/?id.346459, https://vuldb.com/?submit.753165). No specific mitigations are provided beyond avoiding affected versions.
The exploit has been released publicly and may be used for attacks, published on 2026-02-18.
Details
- CWE(s)