Uncontrolled Search Path Element Affecting nbconvert package, versions [,7.17.0)
Threat Intelligence
This vulnerability is trending on Twitter; this may indicate a growing threat.
Snyk has a proof-of-concept or detailed explanation of how to exploit this vulnerability.
The probability is the direct output of the EPSS model, and conveys an overall sense of the threat of exploitation in the wild. The percentile measures the EPSS probability relative to all known EPSS scores. Note: This data is updated daily, relying on the latest available EPSS model version. Check out the EPSS documentation for more details.
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Test your applications- Snyk IDSNYK-PYTHON-NBCONVERT-14463457
- published18 Dec 2025
- disclosed17 Dec 2025
- creditYohann Sillam
Introduced: 17 Dec 2025
CVE-2025-53000 Â (opens in a new tab)How to fix?
Upgrade nbconvert to version 7.17.0 or higher.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Uncontrolled Search Path Element due to unsafe executable resolution when exporting notebooks containing SVG output to PDF. During export, the svg2pdf.py preprocessor resolves the inkscape executable using shutil.which(), which on Windows includes the current working directory in the search path by default. An attacker can place a malicious executable named inkscape in the notebook’s directory and trick a victim into exporting the notebook, causing arbitrary code to execute with the victim’s privileges during the conversion process.
Notes:
This vulnerability is only exploitable on Windows.
The behavior affects supported Python versions prior to 3.12 (which ignore the NoDefaultCurrentDirectoryInExePath setting) and also impacts Python 3.12+ when the environment variable is unset (the Windows default).
Workaround
This vulnerability can be mitigated by disabling the searching of inkscape software from CWD and relying on fixed safe search places.
It is also recommended to enable the NoDefaultCurrentDirectoryInExePath environment variable to reduce the risk of unintentionally executing files from untrusted locations.