CVE-2022-40898 — wheel
HIGHCVE-2022-40898 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Improper Input Validation vulnerability in wheel. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for wheel — see the affected versions and patch details below.
pypa/wheel vulnerable to Regular Expression denial of service (ReDoS)
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-40898.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-40898 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
wheelReal-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
Python Packaging Authority (PyPA) Wheel is a reference implementation of the Python wheel packaging standard. Wheel 0.37.1 and earlier are vulnerable to a Regular Expression denial of service via attacker controlled input to the wheel cli. The vulnerable regex is used to verify the validity of Wheel file names. This has been patched in version 0.38.1.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | wheel | all versions | 0.38.1pip install --upgrade 'wheel==0.38.1' |
Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for wheel, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update wheel to 0.38.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-40898 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-40898 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-40898. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
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.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | rhc-worker-playbook-0:0.1.10-1.el9_5 | RHSA-2024:10761 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | python-wheel-1:0.36.2-8.el9 | RHSA-2023:6712 |
| Red Hat Software Collections for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | rh-python38-python-wheel-0:0.33.6-9.el7 | RHSA-2023:6793 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-40898 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-40898 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.