CVE-2026-42859

High

Published: 11 May 2026

Published

11 May 2026

Modified

13 May 2026

KEV Added

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Patch

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CVSS Score v4 8.1 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

EPSS Score 0.0055 41.9th percentile

Risk Priority 55 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-42859 is a high-severity Classic Buffer Overflow (CWE-120) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 8.1 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 41.9th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-29167

Vulnerability details

Neat VNC is a VNC server library. Prior to 0.9.6, a pre-authentication stack buffer overflow exists in neatvnc in the RSA-AES security type handler. An unauthenticated remote attacker who can reach the VNC listening socket can send a crafted security…

type 5 (RSA-AES) or security type 129 (RSA-AES-256) handshake with an oversized client RSA public key, causing rsa_aes_send_challenge in src/auth/rsa-aes.c to overflow a 1024-byte on-stack buffer when encrypting the server challenge. This results in at least a denial of service via server crash. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.9.6.

CWE(s): CWE-120

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access

Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.

attack.mitre.org →

T1210 Exploitation of Remote Services Lateral Movement

Adversaries may exploit remote services to gain unauthorized access to internal systems once inside of a network.

attack.mitre.org →

T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact

Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.

attack.mitre.org →

Why these techniques?

Pre-auth remote stack buffer overflow in exposed VNC server enables unauthenticated exploitation of public-facing/remote service leading to application DoS via crafted handshake.

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0