GHSA-4g4c-mfqg-pj8r
Magic Wormhole: "wormhole receive" allows arbitrary local file overwrite
Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| PyPI | magic-wormhole | >= 0.21.0, < 0.23.0 | 0.23.0 |
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
### Impact
_What kind of vulnerability is it? Who is impacted?_
Receiving a file (`wormhole receive`) from a malicious party could result in overwriting critical local files, including `~/.ssh/authorized_keys` and `.bashrc`. This could be used to compromise the receiver's computer.
Only the sender of the file (the party who runs `wormhole send`) can mount the attack. Other parties (including the transit/relay servers) are excluded by the wormhole protocol.
### Patches
_Has the problem been patched? What versions should users upgrade to?_
The bug has been fixed in magic-wormhole 0.23.0. All users should upgrade to this version.
The vulnerability first surfaced in the 0.21.0 release on 23-Oct-2025.
### Workarounds
_Is there a way for users to fix or remediate the vulnerability without upgrading?_
As a workaround, the receiver can override the sender's filename with the `--output` or `-o` option. For example: `wormhole receive -o shopping-list.txt` will write the file to `shopping-list.txt` in the local directory, regardless of what the sender tries to do. To be effective, this option must be added to every invocation of `wormhole receive` / `wormhole rx`.
### References
_Are there any links users can visit to find out more?_
Incoming file transfer requests include a `filename`, used to decide where the file contents will be written. Well-behaving senders compute this from the `basename()` of the sent file (which discards all but the last segment of the path). To guard against malicious senders, the receiver also applies `basename()` to the incoming filename. During refactoring in version 0.21.0, this receiver-side check was accidentally dropped. The check was restored in version 0.23.0 along with a unit test.
Many thanks to Ian McKenzie (@ikmckenz) for spotting the bug and reaching out with a fix.
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.