CVE 5.3 MEDIUM

filelock Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) Symlink Vulnerability in SoftFileLock_CVE-2026-22701

5.3 / 10
MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H

Description

filelock is a platform-independent file lock for Python. Prior to version 3.20.3, a TOCTOU race condition vulnerability exists in the SoftFileLock implementation of the filelock package. An attacker with local filesystem access and permission to create symlinks can exploit a race condition between the permission validation and file creation to cause lock operations to fail or behave unexpectedly. The vulnerability occurs in the _acquire() method between raise_on_not_writable_file() (permission check) and os.open() (file creation). During this race window, an attacker can create a symlink at the lock file path, potentially causing the lock to operate on an unintended target file or leading to denial of service. This issue has been patched in version 3.20.3.

Basic Information

ID CVE-2026-22701
Source GitHub_M
Published Jan 10, 2026 at 05:59

Affected Product

Vendor tox-dev
Product filelock
Version < 3.20.3
Affected Versions tox-dev filelock < 3.20.3

CWE Classification

References

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