Vulnerabilities

Security research · CVE-2026-118938

Fickling check_safety() bypass: dotted __qualname__ in STACK_GLOBAL resolves a class-method attribute path that evades call analysis

Published Oct 30, 2026 · catalog updated Oct 30, 2026 · Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Last checked Nov 1, 2026. A connected source was read within the last 7 days.

Check if you run it

No confirmed exploitation is on record for CVE-2026-118938. EPSS is 0.48%. Act only if a listed version of Red Hat Red Hat Enterprise Linux is installed.

Severity

High8.8

Known exploitation

Not in CISA/VulnCheck KEV

EPSS

0.48%

Remediation

Advisory link

Affected products

vendor trailofbits fickling

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.