CVE-2024-3220

Default mimetype known files writeable on Windows

At a glance

Severity
LOW 2.3
EPSS
EPSS 0.71 % · percentile 54 (2026-10-27)
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
PSF
NVD status
Deferred

Description

There is a defect in the CPython standard library module “mimetypes” where on Windows the default list of known file locations are writable meaning other users can create invalid files to cause MemoryError to be raised on Python runtime startup or have file extensions be interpreted as the incorrect file type. This defect is caused by the default locations of Linux and macOS platforms (such as “/etc/mime.types”) also being used on Windows, where they are user-writable locations (“C:\etc\mime.types”). To work-around this issue a user can call mimetypes.init() with an empty list (“[]”) on Windows platforms to avoid using the default list of known file locations.

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 4.0LOW 2.3CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:NPSF
CVSS 4.0LOW 2.3CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XNVD · cna@python.org (Secondary)

Weaknesses (CWE)

European references

CERT-FR advisories

Affected products

ProductVersions
Python Software Foundation · CPythonaffected 0 < 3.11.18 ; affected 3.12.0 < 3.12.16 ; affected 3.13.0 < 3.13.18 ; affected 3.14.0 < 3.14.9 ; affected 3.15.0 < 3.15.1 ; affected 3.16.0a1 < 3.16.0

References

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
CERT-FR (ANSSI)Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD