CVE-2026-24049: wheel Allows Arbitrary File Permission Modification via Path Traversal

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2026-01-22 · updated 2026-09-10
Weakness: CWE-22

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

pypa wheel: from 0.40.0 before 0.46.2 — fixed in 0.46.2
Pypi Wheel: from 0.40.0 before 0.46.2; 0.40.0, 0.41.0, 0.41.1, 0.41.2, 0.41.3, 0.42.0 (+6) — fixed in 0.46.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: pypa wheel 0.46.2; Pypi Wheel 0.46.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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