Command Injection Affecting virtualenv package, versions [,21.14.7)
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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Test your applications- Snyk IDSNYK-PYTHON-VIRTUALENV-21282509
- published21 Oct 2026
- disclosed20 Oct 2026
- creditUnknown
Introduced: 20 Oct 2026
NewCVE-2026-113725 (opens in a new tab)How to fix?
Upgrade virtualenv to version 21.14.7 or higher.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Command Injection via insufficient escaping of the virtual environment name in the bash activate script (src/virtualenv/activation/bash/activate.sh). Bash processes PS1 in two passes each time it draws the prompt: it first decodes backslash prompt escapes (e.g. \\ becomes \, \$ becomes $), then expands the result. The activate script escapes the environment name for the expansion pass only, so a backslash in the name undoes that escaping. An attacker who controls the virtual environment name - through the directory name, the --prompt flag, or the VIRTUALENV_PROMPT environment variable - can supply a name such as a\$(touch PWNED), causing arbitrary shell commands to execute each time bash draws the prompt after the environment is activated.