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Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2026-58198 json

ChatterBot: Symlink-Following Arbitrary Write via UbuntuCorpusTrainer

published 4mo ago modified 17d ago also EUVD-2026-42685 , GHSA-wvrh-2f4m-924v

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 3%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

ChatterBot is a machine learning, conversational dialog engine for creating chat bots. Prior to 1.2.14, UbuntuCorpusTrainer.extract() uses a predictable home-rooted output directory (~/ubuntu_data/ubuntu_dialogs) with a check-then-create pattern followed by tar.extractall(path=self.data_path), allowing a local attacker who pre-plants a symlink at the predictable path to cause archive contents to be written through the symlink to an attacker-chosen directory. This issue is fixed in version 1.2.14.

Patch / fix

  • pypi chatterbot 1.2.14
  • chatterbot chatterbot 1.2.14

Is CVE-2026-58198 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
4mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.14% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 3% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot/security/advisories/GHSA-wvrh-2f4m-924v referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
GitHub 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi chatterbot
<1.2.14
1.2.14

Affected products

  • gunthercox ChatterBot

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition
  • CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
  • CWE-61 UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.