CVE-2026-58198 ChatterBot: Symlink-Following Arbitrary Write via UbuntuCorpusTrainer
A local attacker can exploit a symlink race condition in UbuntuCorpusTrainer to write arbitrary files to attacker-chosen directories.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-58198?
CVE-2026-58198 is a medium-severity path traversal vulnerability in gunthercox ChatterBot, published on 9 Jul 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
ChatterBot is a machine learning, conversational dialog engine for creating chat bots. Prior to 1.2.14, UbuntuCorpusTrainer.extract() uses a predictable home-rooted output directory (~/ubuntu_data/ubuntu_dialogs) with a check-then-create pattern followed by tar.extractall(path=self.data_path), allowing a local attacker who pre-plants a symlink at the predictable path to cause archive contents to be written through the symlink to an attacker-chosen directory. This issue is fixed in version 1.2.14.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-58198?
2 open source packages ship an affected version, including ChatterBot and chatterbot.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
ChatterBot PyPI | All versions | 1.2.14 |
chatterbot PyPI | All versions | 1.2.14 |
How do I fix CVE-2026-58198?
Upgrade ChatterBot to 1.2.14 or later.
Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.
Is CVE-2026-58198 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-58198 exists.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-wvrh-2f4m-924v.