Arbitrary Code Injection Affecting virtualenv package, versions [21.14.8,21.14.9)
Threat Intelligence
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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Start learning- Snyk IDSNYK-PYTHON-VIRTUALENV-21282483
- published21 Oct 2026
- disclosed20 Oct 2026
- creditUnknown
Introduced: 20 Oct 2026
NewCVE-2026-113723 (opens in a new tab)How to fix?
Upgrade virtualenv to version 21.14.9 or higher.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Arbitrary Code Injection via insufficient escaping of the VIRTUAL_ENV_PROMPT variable in activate.sh, which allows an attacker who controls the virtual environment prompt string to inject arbitrary shell code. When the activation script constructs PS1 by interpolating VIRTUAL_ENV_PROMPT without fully neutralising backslashes, dollar signs, and backticks, a malicious prompt value causes arbitrary command execution in the activating shell session.