Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2026-16082: Sipeed PicoClaw TOCTOU race condition in ExecTool.executeRun

CVE-2026-16082 · Severity: medium · CVSS 5.3 · Published 2026-07-18

Technologies: Sipeed PicoClaw. Vendors: Sipeed.

Executive brief

Sipeed PicoClaw is an AI assistant framework written in Go. A security flaw allows a local attacker to trick the system into executing commands in a different directory than the one approved by a human or automated policy. This could lead to unauthorized file access or modification within the workspace, bypassing the safety checks intended to restrict where commands can run.

Technical details

A Time-of-Check Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) race condition exists in the ExecTool.executeRun function within pkg/agent/pipeline_execute.go. The vulnerability occurs because the approval hook inspects the working directory (cwd) argument before the tool re-resolves symlinks immediately prior to process execution in pkg/tools/shell.go. A local attacker can exploit this window by swapping a workspace-local symlink after approval is granted but before execution begins. This causes the command to run in an 'evil' directory while the approval mechanism believes it is running in a 'safe' one. While the attack is restricted to the workspace, it breaks the integrity of the approval flow for relative file operations and directory-sensitive commands. As of the advisory date, no patch is available and the issue was marked as 'not planned' by the maintainers.

Affected products

  • Sipeed PicoClaw <= 0.2.9

Timeline

  • 2026-07-18: disclosed
  • 2026-07-18: advisory

References

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