Intel

AIKIDO-2026-10495

virtualenv is vulnerable to Path Traversal

Path Traversal Pre-CVE
Found by Aikido Intel before public disclosure or CVE publication.

65

Medium Risk

This Affects:

PYTHONvirtualenv
20.0.0 - 21.2.3
Fixed in 21.2.4

TL;DR

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to path traversal due to improper validation of paths within zipapp archives. The affected logic determines whether a resolved path stays within the archive using string-based prefix checks after os.path.realpath, which is unreliable across platforms and can be bypassed in edge cases involving path separators or symlinks. An attacker able to supply crafted paths can cause resolution outside the intended archive boundary, potentially accessing unintended files on the filesystem.

Who does this affect?

You are affected if you are using a version that falls within the vulnerable range.

Background info

virtualenv is vulnerable to Path Traversal in versions 20.0.0 - 21.2.3.

How to fix this

Upgrade the virtualenv library to a patch version.