Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource 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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Test your applications- Snyk IDSNYK-PYTHON-VIRTUALENV-21282511
- published21 Oct 2026
- disclosed20 Oct 2026
- creditAnthropic's OSS Scanner
Introduced: 20 Oct 2026
NewCVE-2026-113720 (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 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource in the copy and copytree functions within src/virtualenv/util/path/_sync.py, files copied into a new virtual environment are created via shutil.copy, which does not use exclusive creation flags and does not enforce safe permissions at creation time. A local attacker who can race the file-creation window can replace a copied file - such as a Python interpreter or activation script - with a malicious payload, leading to privilege escalation or arbitrary code execution in the context of the user activating or using the virtual environment. The fix introduces _copy_file, which opens the destination with O_CREAT | O_EXCL and applies a mode derived from the source file's execute bits, eliminating the race window.