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🐍 PyPI
Not in CISA KEV
HIGH severity

CVE-2019-12761 — pyxdg

HIGH

CVE-2019-12761 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Code Injection vulnerability in pyxdg. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for pyxdg — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Code Injection in PyXDG

Also known asGHSA-r6v3-hpxj-r8rvPYSEC-2019-199SNYK-PYTHON-PYXDG-174562
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
1 known
Exploitation data as of Nov 2, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
2.1%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs82th percentile — riskier than 82% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.11%0.94%1.77%2.60%0.6%2.1%May 26Sep 26Nov 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

Where this sits among everything scored

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
🐍pyxdg

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

A code injection issue was discovered in PyXDG before 0.26 via crafted Python code in a Category element of a Menu XML document in a .menu file. XDG_CONFIG_DIRS must be set up to trigger xdg.Menu.parse parsing within the directory containing this file. This is due to a lack of sanitization in xdg/Menu.py before an eval call.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐍PyPIpyxdgall versions0.26pip install --upgrade 'pyxdg==0.26'

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
pyxdgpython
< 0.26
range
Exploits & PoCs
1

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

A code injection issue was discovered in PyXDG before 0.26 via crafted P…

gist.github.comNVDAug 2021

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pyxdg, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update pyxdg to 0.26 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2019-12761 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.

Fixing This On Your OS

If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.

UbuntuHIGH
USN-4700-1Ubuntu

Frequently Asked Questions

A code injection issue was discovered in PyXDG before 0.26 via crafted Python code in a Category element of a Menu XML document in a .menu file. XDG_CONFIG_DIRS must be set up to trigger xdg.Menu.parse parsing within the directory containing this file. This is due to a lack of sanitization in xdg/Menu.py before an eval call.
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2019-12761: pyxdg RCE — Fixed in 0.26