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No exploitation reported

CVE-2026-118938

No exploitation reported by the sources we read.

  • Published2026-10-30
  • WeaknessCWE-502 · CWE-706

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

In Trail of Bits fickling through 0.1.12, a pickle STACK_GLOBAL operand carrying a dotted __qualname__ (for example "Values.read_file") is resolved by pickle's find_class through _getattribute to an arbitrary attribute path rather than to a module-level function. Fickling records only the leading component of the name in its import tracking and renders the operation as a plain import (for instance, 'python -m fickling' displays it as 'from optparse import Values.read_file'), so the trailing attribute reference is never analyzed as a call. The OvertlyBadEvals analysis pass does not flag it, and check_safety() returns LIKELY_SAFE with zero findings. This allows an attacker to reach a class method that performs code execution: optparse.Values.read_file executes exec(open(filename).read(), vars), achieving arbitrary code execution when the crafted pickle is loaded through fickling.load(), which chains check_safety() into pickle.loads() as an explicit security gate. optparse is present in all current CPython 3.x releases (deprecated as of Python 3.13, not removed). This weakness is in the resolution and analysis of dotted attribute-path names, and is distinct from and independently fixable from the module-origin trust weakness tracked as CVE-2026-16760: resolving or flagging dotted attribute-path imports closes this vector while leaving the module-level trust behavior unchanged. This bypass was verified to remain present on the vendor master branch at commit d011709 as of 2026-10-30, after the vendor's October blocklist additions and a new heuristic that flags private stdlib attributes; because the public class method Values.read_file is neither blocklisted nor flagged as a private attribute, it is not addressed by those remediations.

Timeline

dates in UTC
  1. 2026-10-3022:16CVE publishedNVD

Observed activity

isMalicious corpus · updated 2026-10-31 15:37 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-2026-118938?format=txt
  • CSV export: https://api.ismalicious.com/edl/cve/CVE-2026-118938?format=csv
  • TAXII collection of exploited CVEs
  • The EDL and CSV take an API key on the Pro plan.

Versions per branch

Neither OSV.dev nor the vendor advisories we read list affected versions for CVE-2026-118938 yet.

Full record on NVD

Fix

No fix published by the sources we read yet. NVD record

Detection

Nuclei template
none so far
ProjectDiscovery
Exploit-DB
no entry
Exploit-DB
Proof-of-concept repositories
none listed
PoC-in-GitHub

Sources

  • NVDCVE recordread 2026-10-31
  • CNACVSS 3.18.8read 2026-10-31
  • CNAweakness (CWE)CWE-502, CWE-706read 2026-10-31

Technical details

CVSS v3 Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Published
2026-10-30
Last Modified
2026-10-30
NVD status
Received

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-118938?

In Trail of Bits fickling through 0.1.12, a pickle STACK_GLOBAL operand carrying a dotted __qualname__ (for example "Values.read_file") is resolved by pickle's find_class through _getattribute to an arbitrary attribute path rather than to a module-level function. Fickling records only the leading component of the name in its import tracking and renders the operation as a plain import (for instance, 'python -m fickling' displays it as 'from optparse import Values.read_file'), so the trailing attribute reference is never analyzed as a call. The OvertlyBadEvals analysis pass does not flag it, and check_safety() returns LIKELY_SAFE with zero findings. This allows an attacker to reach a class method that performs code execution: optparse.Values.read_file executes exec(open(filename).read(), vars), achieving arbitrary code execution when the crafted pickle is loaded through fickling.load(), which chains check_safety() into pickle.loads() as an explicit security gate. optparse is present in all current CPython 3.x releases (deprecated as of Python 3.13, not removed). This weakness is in the resolution and analysis of dotted attribute-path names, and is distinct from and independently fixable from the module-origin trust weakness tracked as CVE-2026-16760: resolving or flagging dotted attribute-path imports closes this vector while leaving the module-level trust behavior unchanged. This bypass was verified to remain present on the vendor master branch at commit d011709 as of 2026-10-30, after the vendor's October blocklist additions and a new heuristic that flags private stdlib attributes; because the public class method Values.read_file is neither blocklisted nor flagged as a private attribute, it is not addressed by those remediations.

Is CVE-2026-118938 actively exploited?

Active exploitation of CVE-2026-118938 has not been confirmed.

What is the CVSS score for CVE-2026-118938?

CVE-2026-118938 has a CVSS v3 base score of 8.8 (HIGH severity), with vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

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