Vulnerability · Published Oct 20, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

CVE-2026-113719virtualenv: Seed replacement does not contain metadata deletion paths

Medium 4.5

In plain English

A medium-severity path traversal in virtualenv from pypa. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 10% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)4.5Medium

Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 89.6% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: poc

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

virtualenv is a tool for creating isolated virtual python environments. Prior to 21.14.9, PipInstall._uninstall_previous_version() accepts existing seed-package metadata and _uninstall_dist() joins entries from top_level.txt and RECORD to site-packages without checking containment. When a reused destination contains distribution metadata influenced by another account, relative traversal, absolute entries, or linked parents can cause app-data reseeding to delete files outside the environment or the environment root with the invoking user's permissions, provided that user has deletion rights over the named paths. The deletion occurs during environment creation before any later use of the environment. Fresh environments without existing package metadata and creation with --clear do not enter this cleanup path. This issue is fixed in version 21.14.9.

Affected packages & fixed versions

Ecosystem	Package	Fixed in	Advisory
Debian:12	python-virtualenv	no fix listed	DEBIAN-CVE-2026-113719
Debian:13	python-virtualenv	no fix listed	DEBIAN-CVE-2026-113719
Debian:14	python-virtualenv	no fix listed	DEBIAN-CVE-2026-113719
PyPI	virtualenv	21.14.9	GHSA-hhxq-47xx-j5xx
Ubuntu:26.04:LTS	python-virtualenv	no fix listed	UBUNTU-CVE-2026-113719
Ubuntu:26.10	python-virtualenv	no fix listed	UBUNTU-CVE-2026-113719

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
pypa	virtualenv	< 21.14.9

Weakness: CWE-22 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L

References

https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/security/advisories/GHSA-hhxq-47xx-j5xx x_refsource_CONFIRM
https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/pull/3428 x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/commit/e3cea6fa10a50fa29cf1fdddd772458fba076d5f x_refsource_MISC
https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/releases/tag/21.14.9 x_refsource_MISC