CVE-2026-59890 is a medium severity vulnerability in setuptools affecting certain versions. It involves a Unicode normalization issue in the source distribution building process on macOS APFS/HFS+ filesystems. Due to differences in Unicode normalization forms between file names on disk and MANIFEST.in patterns, exclusion rules may fail, causing unintended inclusion of private or sensitive files in published packages. A fix is available that normalizes file names and patterns before matching to prevent this issue.
### Summary
A path traversal vulnerability in `PackageIndex` was fixed in setuptools version 78.1.1
### Details
```
def _download_url(self, url, tmpdir):
# Determine download filename
#
name, _fragment = egg_info_for_url(url)
if name:
while '..' in name:
name = name.replace('..', '.').replace('\\', '_')
else:
name = "__downloaded__" # default if URL has no path contents
if name.endswith('.[egg.zip](http://egg.zip/)'):
name = name[:-4] # strip the extra .zip before download
--> filename = os.path.join(tmpdir, name)
```
Here: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/blob/6ead555c5fb29bc57fe6105b1bffc163f56fd558/setuptools/package_index.py#L810C1-L825C88
`os.path.join()` discards the first argument `tmpdir` if the second begins with a slash or drive letter.
`name` is derived from a URL without sufficient sanitization. While there is some attempt to sanitize by replacing instances of '..' with '.', it is insufficient.
### Risk Assessment
As easy_install and package_index are deprecated, the exploitation surface is reduced.
However, it seems this could be exploited in a similar fashion like https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-r9hx-vwmv-q579, and as described by POC 4 in https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-cx63-2mw6-8hw5 report: via malicious URLs present on the pages of a package index.
### Impact
An attacker would be allowed to write files to arbitrary locations on the filesystem with the permissions of the process running the Python code, which could escalate to RCE depending on the context.
### References
https://huntr.com/bounties/d6362117-ad57-4e83-951f-b8141c6e7ca5
https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/4946