VulnerabilityPublished 27 Oct 2026

CVE-2026-113717: virtualenv · Pip seeding with download omits wheel digest verification

Affects charm-toolsSource GCVE Database

Authoritative record:CVE-2026-113717· Low 2.3

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 2.3 Low.

Data as of 27 Oct 2026, 21:12 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score

2.3Low

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:P/VC:L/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: High
Attack Requirements: Present
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Passive
Vulnerable system confidentiality: Low
Vulnerable system integrity: Low
Vulnerable system availability: Low
Subsequent system confidentiality: None
Subsequent system integrity: None
Subsequent system availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable system is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed below, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed “remotely exploitable” and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: High: The successful attack depends on the evasion or circumvention of security-enhancing techniques in place that would otherwise hinder the attack. These include: Evasion of exploit mitigation techniques, for example, circumvention of address space randomization (ASLR) or data execution prevention (DEP) must be performed for the attack to be successful; Obtaining target-specific secrets. The attacker must gather some target-specific secret before the attack can be successful. A secret is any piece of information that cannot be obtained through any amount of reconnaissance. To obtain the secret the attacker must perform additional attacks or break otherwise secure measures (e.g. knowledge of a secret key may be needed to break a crypto channel). This operation must be performed for each attacked target.
Attack Requirements: Present: The successful attack depends on the presence of specific deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system that enable the attack. These include: a race condition must be won to successfully exploit the vulnerability (the successfulness of the attack is conditioned on execution conditions that are not under full control of the attacker, or the attack may need to be launched multiple times against a single target before being successful); the attacker must inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim (e.g. vulnerabilities requiring an on-path attacker).
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files of the vulnerable system to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: Passive: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires limited interaction by the targeted user with the vulnerable system and the attacker’s payload. These interactions would be considered involuntary and do not require that the user actively subvert protections built into the vulnerable system.
Vulnerable system confidentiality: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact to the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the Vulnerable System are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Subsequent System or all confidentiality impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Subsequent System or all integrity impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the Subsequent System or all availability impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 20 Oct 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Homebrewcharm-tools`pkg:brew/charm-tools`Other threats	Affected >=2.7.3	Fixed in–

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AI-suggested

Users should avoid using the combination of --seeder pip and --download unless necessary. The issue is addressed by PR #3430, which ensures wheels are acquired and verified before pip is invoked with index lookup disabled. Applying this fix when available will prevent the vulnerability. Until then, users should ensure that pip indexes configured in pip.conf are trusted and not attacker-controlled. No other specific mitigations are indicated by the vendor advisory.

Description

CVE-2026-113717 is a vulnerability in virtualenv's pip seeder when used with the --seeder pip and --download options. In this scenario, virtualenv skips its wheel digest verification and allows pip to fetch wheels from an index without verifying their SHA-256 digest against PyPI metadata. This can lead to installation of modified or malicious pip wheels if an attacker controls the index configured in pip.conf. The issue affects virtualenv versions starting from 2.7.3. The vulnerability has a low CVSS score and no known exploits in the wild.

Impact

An attacker who controls the pip index configured in pip.conf can serve a malicious pip wheel with the same filename and version as the bundled wheel. Because virtualenv skips digest verification in this scenario, the malicious wheel can be installed without detection. This could lead to execution of arbitrary code when pip is invoked in the seeded environment. However, the attack requires both --seeder pip and --download options and control over the pip index, limiting the attack surface. The CVSS score is low (2.3), reflecting the complexity and limited scope of exploitation.

Summary

The vulnerability arises because when virtualenv is invoked with --seeder pip and --download, it first obtains the bundled pip wheel with download=False, skipping virtualenv's download_wheel() and verify_wheel_digest() functions. Then, pip is allowed to access the configured index to select a wheel. If the index serves a wheel with the same package and version but a different SHA-256 digest, virtualenv does not verify this digest against PyPI metadata, allowing a modified wheel to be installed. This behavior was confirmed by Anthropic's OSS Scanner (ANT-2026-74ALJBUF) using a local malicious index. The default app-data seeder does perform digest verification and rejects mismatched wheels. The issue is specific to the pip seeder's download path and does not affect default seeder behavior. A pull request (PR #3430) was created to acquire and verify wheels before invoking pip with index lookup disabled, addressing this issue.

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 27 Oct 2026, 21:12 UTC

Technical details

References

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