CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2019-6446 — An issue was discovered in NumPy before 1.16.3

Critical CVSS 9.8

An issue was discovered in NumPy before 1.16.3. It uses the pickle Python module unsafely, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted serialized object, as demonstrated by a numpy.load call. NOTE: third parties dispute this issue because it is a behavior that might have legitimate applications in (for example) loading serialized Python object arrays from trusted and authenticated sources.

Severity
Critical
CVSS
9.8 (3.0)
Published
2019-01-16
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
python/pypi
Weaknesses
CWE-502

Affected products

  • numpy / numpy
  • fedoraproject / fedora / 30

Matched remediation archetype

Unsafe deserialization and object reconstruction

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Check exposure

  • Inventory serialization formats accepted from requests, queues, caches, files, cookies, and cross-service messages.
  • Trace whether untrusted input can select classes, types, callbacks, constructors, or object hooks during decoding.
  • Identify signing, schema validation, trust-boundary, and compatibility settings for each decoder.

Remediate safely

  • Replace native object deserialization with a data-only format and explicit schema validation.
  • If replacement is not immediate, use a safe decoder with a minimal type allowlist and disable polymorphic or executable hooks.
  • Update the affected library and add inert tests for unknown types, extra fields, malformed nesting, and unsigned data.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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