REDHAT-BUG-2431959: High severity pypi/wheel vulnerability

Published Jan 22, 2026
·
Updated

wheel is a command line tool for manipulating Python wheel files, as defined in PEP 427. In versions 0.46.1 and below, 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 Software

1 affected component
pypi/wheel<=0.46.1

Remediation

Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.

  1. Upgrade

    Upgrade wheel to a version that resolves this vulnerability.

    Fixed in 0.46.2

Event History

Jan 22, 2026
Data Sourced
via Red Hat·05:01 AM
DescriptionSeverityAffected Software
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