CVE-2026-44972 — guarddog
MEDIUMCVE-2026-44972 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5) CWE-116 vulnerability in guarddog. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
GuardDog: Unsanitized human-readable scan output allows terminal escape injection from malicious package content
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-44972.
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-2026-44972 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 378,567 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
guarddogReal-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
Summary
GuardDog includes attacker-controlled filenames, file locations, messages, and code snippets in its default human-readable output without escaping terminal control characters. A malicious package can therefore inject ANSI or OSC escape sequences into analyst terminals or CI logs.
Description
The finding formatter stores file paths and snippets from scanned content:
location = file_path + ":" + str(start_line)
finding = {
"location": location,
"code": code,
"message": result["extra"]["message"],
}
The human-readable reporter later prints these values directly:
" * " + finding["message"] + " at " + finding["location"] + "\n " + _format_code_line_for_output(finding["code"])
No escaping is applied for control characters such as \x1b. A malicious package can therefore ship a filename like:
evil\x1b[2J.py
or matched source lines containing terminal escapes, which survive into the final CLI output.
Reproduction summary
- Create a file whose name contains
\x1b[2J. - Feed a semgrep-style result referencing that file into
Analyzer._format_semgrep_response(). - Render the result with
HumanReadableReporter.print_scan_results(). - The output string contains the raw escape bytes, which a terminal may interpret.
Key code paths
guarddog/analyzer/analyzer.py:377-392guarddog/reporters/human_readable.py:36-42guarddog/reporters/human_readable.py:84-91
Practical impact
This can be used to:
- clear or rewrite analyst terminal output
- inject misleading or spoofed log content in CI
- emit clickable OSC 8 hyperlinks or title changes in compatible terminals
Prior public disclosure check
As of 2026-03-18, no matching public GitHub advisory, CVE, or public repo issue was found for this specific bug.
Suggested fix
Escape or strip terminal control characters before rendering any attacker-controlled value in human-readable output. This should cover package names, file paths, messages, and code snippets.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | guarddog | ≥ 2.6.0 | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for guarddog, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
No patched version of guarddog has shipped for CVE-2026-44972 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
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-2026-44972 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-44972. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-44972 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-44972 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.