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CVE PROGRAM SOURCE RECORD7.1 High

CVE-2026-24049

wheel Allows Arbitrary File Permission Modification via Path Traversal

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Status
Published
Published
Updated
Assigning organization
GitHub_M

Description

wheel is a command line tool for manipulating Python wheel files, as defined in PEP 427. In versions 0.40.0 through 0.46.1, the unpack function is vulnerable to file permission modification through mishandling of file permissions after extraction. The logic blindly trusts the filename from the archive header for the chmod operation, even though the extraction process itself might have sanitized the path. Attackers can craft a malicious wheel file that, when unpacked, changes the permissions of critical system files (e.g., /etc/passwd, SSH keys, config files), allowing for Privilege Escalation or arbitrary code execution by modifying now-writable scripts. This issue has been fixed in version 0.46.2.

Affected products

Version statuses are supplied by the assigning organization. Consult the original record for detailed ranges and platform conditions.

pypa wheel

  • >= 0.40.0, < 0.46.2affected

References