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

Description (CNA)

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 (CNA)

Vendor / product	Versions
pypa / wheel	affected >= 0.40.0, < 0.46.2

CWE

CWE-22, CWE-732

References

ADP enrichment

CISA-ADP

No English description supplied.

No references supplied.

redhat-SADP

A path traversal flaw has been discovered in the python wheel too. 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.