# CVE-2022-40898: pypa/wheel vulnerable to Regular Expression denial of service (ReDoS)

Source: https://junglewise.ai/threats/cve-2022-40898-pypa-wheel-vulnerable-to-regular-expression-denial-of-service  
Publisher: Junglewise Threat Intelligence, https://junglewise.ai/threats  
Published: 2022-12-23  
License: CC BY 4.0 with a link back

CVE-2022-40898 · Severity: low · CVSS 3.1 · Published 2022-12-23

An issue discovered in Python Packaging Authority (PyPA) Wheel 0.37.1 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via attacker controlled input to wheel cli.

Vendors: [PyPI](https://junglewise.ai/threats/vendors/pypi).

## Quick answers

**Is CVE-2022-40898 exploited in the wild?** No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2022-40898 being exploited in the wild.

**How severe is CVE-2022-40898?** Low severity, with a CVSS score of 3.1, published 23 December 2022.

**Which products and versions are affected?** wheel (PyPI) ECOSYSTEM:introduced=0,fixed=0.38.1.

**Is there a fix for CVE-2022-40898?** Yes. wheel (PyPI): upgrade to 0.38.1 or later. Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.

**Am I affected by CVE-2022-40898?** Check whether you run wheel (PyPI) at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

## How to fix

- wheel (PyPI): upgrade to 0.38.1 or later

  ```sh
  pip install "wheel>=0.38.1"
  ```


## Affected products

- wheel (PyPI) ECOSYSTEM:introduced=0,fixed=0.38.1

## Identifiers

- CVE-2022-40898
- GHSA-qwmp-2cf2-g9g6
- PYSEC-2022-43017

## Related threats

- [PyPA wheel path traversal in unpack function](https://junglewise.ai/threats/cve-2026-24049-pypa-wheel-path-traversal-in-unpack-function)