Medium severity · published Jul 9, 2026
CVE-2026-58198
ChatterBot: Symlink-Following Arbitrary Write via UbuntuCorpusTrainer
5.5
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 3% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
CH
ChatterBot · gunthercox
< 1.2.14 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-58198
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-58198
github.com
https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot/commit/82817b5c28bfd43e682b991bcc76e6f780726dbf
github.com
https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot/pull/2445
github.com
https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot/releases/tag/1.2.14
github.com
https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot/security/advisories/GHSA-wvrh-2f4m-924v
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