CVE-2026-113722
An attacker who influences the environment destination can therefore execute commands with the user's privileges when the user later runs a generated launcher; environment creation and activation do not trigger the command.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.29%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
virtualenv is a tool for creating isolated virtual python environments. Prior to 21.14.9, virtualenv's ScriptMakerCustom and pip pass an incompletely quoted interpreter path to distlib ScriptMaker when generating POSIX console scripts. When the path contains a space or produces a shebang longer than 127 bytes, distlib emits a /bin/sh wrapper whose double-quoted interpreter path still expands command substitutions and backticks. An attacker who influences the environment destination can therefore execute commands with the user's privileges when the user later runs a generated launcher; environment creation and activation do not trigger the command. Existing launchers are not repaired by upgrading virtualenv alone and must be regenerated, while a later independent pip installation or upgrade can reintroduce an affected launcher because pip's vendored distlib is unchanged. The virtualenv fix is released in version 21.14.9.
- CVSS 3.1
- 7.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- EPSS
- 0.29% probability · 21th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-78
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
EPSS moved from 0.2% on 21 October 2026 to 0.3% on 26 October 2026.
References
- https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/commit/2519941bed33ee0d3ac99277f67913e439e476a9
- https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/pull/3417
- https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/releases/tag/21.14.9
- https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/security/advisories/GHSA-c978-59m8-c77v
- https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/security/advisories/GHSA-c978-59m8-c77v
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.