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Public proof of concept

CVE-2018-20225

A public proof of concept exists; no exploitation attested.

  • Published2020-05-08
  • WeaknessCWE-20

Am I affected?

With a domain, we read the version its public headers and pages expose. A distribution build can carry the fix under an older number.

Description

An issue was discovered in pip (all versions) because it installs the version with the highest version number, even if the user had intended to obtain a private package from a private index. This only affects use of the --extra-index-url option, and exploitation requires that the package does not already exist in the public index (and thus the attacker can put the package there with an arbitrary version number). NOTE: it has been reported that this is intended functionality and the user is responsible for using --extra-index-url securely

Timeline

dates in UTC
  1. 2020-05-0818:15CVE publishedNVD
  2. 2026-10-2319:23First public proof of conceptPoC-in-GitHub

Observed activity

isMalicious corpus · updated 2026-10-23 18:48 UTC
Indicators tagged with this CVE, per day0 indicators over 7 days
Block these indicators
  • Firewall list (EDL, text): https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2018-20225?format=txt
  • CSV export: https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2018-20225?format=csv
  • TAXII collection of exploited CVEs
  • The EDL and CSV take an API key on the Pro plan.

Versions per branch

NVD
Pypa pip
BranchAffectedFixed in
—all versionsno fix published

as publishedRanges as NVD and OSV publish them; a distribution’s build can be fixed under an older number.

Fix

Advisories and patches

Detection

read 2026-10-23 19:23 UTC
Nuclei template
none so far
ProjectDiscovery
Exploit-DB
no entry
Exploit-DB
Proof-of-concept repositories
1 repository, unverifiedbrabster/cve-2018-20225
PoC-in-GitHub

Sources

Technical details

CVSS v3 Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Published
2020-05-08
Last Modified
2026-06-17
NVD status
Modified

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-20225?

An issue was discovered in pip (all versions) because it installs the version with the highest version number, even if the user had intended to obtain a private package from a private index. This only affects use of the --extra-index-url option, and exploitation requires that the package does not already exist in the public index (and thus the attacker can put the package there with an arbitrary version number). NOTE: it has been reported that this is intended functionality and the user is responsible for using --extra-index-url securely

Is CVE-2018-20225 actively exploited?

Active exploitation of CVE-2018-20225 has not been confirmed. Its EPSS score was 1.8% on 2026-10-22, the estimated probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.

What is the CVSS score for CVE-2018-20225?

CVE-2018-20225 has a CVSS v3 base score of 7.8 (HIGH severity), with vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

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