CVE-2026-24049

Publication date 23 January 2026

Last updated 23 January 2026

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

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.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
wheel	25.10 questing	Needs evaluation
	24.04 LTS noble	Needs evaluation
	22.04 LTS jammy	Needs evaluation
	20.04 LTS focal	Needs evaluation
	18.04 LTS bionic	Needs evaluation
	16.04 LTS xenial	Needs evaluation
	14.04 LTS trusty	Needs evaluation
python-pip	25.10 questing	Needs evaluation
	24.04 LTS noble	Needs evaluation
	22.04 LTS jammy	Needs evaluation
	20.04 LTS focal	Needs evaluation
	18.04 LTS bionic	Needs evaluation
	16.04 LTS xenial	Needs evaluation
	14.04 LTS trusty	Needs evaluation

Notes

mdeslaur

On focal and earlier, the python-pip package bundles wheel binaries when built. After updating wheel, a no-change rebuild of python-pip is required. On jammy and later, wheel is bundled in the python-pip package and needs to be patched.

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	7.1 · High
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	Required
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	None
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H