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High severityOSV Advisory· Published Jan 22, 2026· Updated Jan 27, 2026

wheel Allows Arbitrary File Permission Modification via Path Traversal

CVE-2026-24049

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.

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Affected packages

Versions sourced from the GitHub Security Advisory.

PackageAffected versionsPatched versions
wheelPyPI
>= 0.40.0, < 0.46.20.46.2

Affected products

142

Patches

Vulnerability mechanics

References

6

News mentions

0

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