CVE-2026-22702

virtualenv Has TOCTOU Vulnerabilities in Directory Creation

State: Published
Severity: 4.5 Medium
Published: Jan 10, 2026
Updated: Jan 12, 2026
Reserved: Jan 8, 2026

Description

virtualenv is a tool for creating isolated virtual python environments. Prior to version 20.36.1, TOCTOU (Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use) vulnerabilities in virtualenv allow local attackers to perform symlink-based attacks on directory creation operations. An attacker with local access can exploit a race condition between directory existence checks and creation to redirect virtualenv's app_data and lock file operations to attacker-controlled locations. This issue has been patched in version 20.36.1.

Scores

CVSS	Score	Vector	Source
3.1	4.5 Medium	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L	GitHub_M

Weaknesses

CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access ('Link Following')
CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization ('Race Condition')

Affected Products

Product	Versions
virtualenvpypa	< 20.36.1Affected

References

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