CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-24049

HighCVSS 7.1
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.32%

25th percentile - higher than 25% of all known CVEs

Summary

The wheel tool versions 0.40.0 through 0.46.1 have a vulnerability in the unpack function that mishandles file permissions after extraction. Attackers can craft a malicious .whl file that, when unpacked, changes permissions of critical system files, leading to privilege escalation or arbitrary code execution.

Risk Assessment

The organization is at risk of system compromise through modification of files like /etc/passwd, SSH keys, or configuration scripts, potentially allowing privilege escalation and full security breach.

Recommendation

Immediately upgrade wheel to version 0.46.2 or later, which contains the fix for this vulnerability.

Related vulnerabilities

Original NVD description (English source)

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.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS