CVE-2026-116499 PUBLISHED

Arbitrary Code Execution in Qiskit SDK QPY Deserialization

Assigner: ibm
Reserved: 26.10.2026 Published: 08.11.2026 Updated: 09.11.2026

IBM Qiskit SDK 1.4.2 through 2.6.2 could allow a local attacker to execute arbitrary code due to deserialization of untrusted data.

Metrics

CVSS 3.1

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS Score: 8.4

Attack Vector	Local	Scope	Unchanged
Attack Complexity	Low	Confidentiality Impact	High
Privileges Required	None	Integrity Impact	High
User Interaction	None	Availability Impact	High

CVSS 3.1

Product Status

Vendor	IBM
Product	Qiskit SDK
Versions	affected from 1.4.2 to 2.6.2 (incl.)

Solutions

Remediation/Fixes guidance:

The issue is addressed in Qiskit versions v2.6.2. This version is patched to no longer use SymPy internally during deserialization of payloads using QPY format versions < 13.

Product(s)Version(s) number and/or range Remediation/Fix/Instructions< Qiskit SDK https://github.com/qiskit/qiskit - qiskit.qpy.load() function>v2.6.2

Upgrade to the patched versions: qiskit v2.6.2.

Credits

The vulnerability was reported to IBM by Nathan Rebello. finder

References

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7295238

Problem Types

CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data CWE