What is CVE-2020-13091?

CVE-2020-13091 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Numfocus Pandas, classified under Deserialization of Untrusted Data. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2020-05-15.

How severe is CVE-2020-13091?

Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.

Deserialization in Numfocus Pandas

CVE-2020-13091

pandas through 1.0.3 can unserialize and execute commands from an untrusted file that is passed to the read_pickle() function, if __reduce__ makes an os.system call. NOTE: third parties dispute this issue because the read_pickle() function is documented as unsafe and it is the user's responsibility to use the function in a secure manner

Vulnerability class: Insecure Deserialization

Published 2020-05-15 · last modified 2026-06-17.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.036 (89.1th percentile), scored 2026-10-03.

Low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, but still tracked. 89th percentile — 89.1% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.034 · newest: 0.036 · change: +0.002

Affected products

Numfocus Pandas

Weakness classification (CWE)

CWE-502 — Deserialization of Untrusted Data

References

github.com/0FuzzingQ/vuln/blob/master/pandas unserialize.md (Exploit, Third Party Advisory)
pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/reference/api/pandas.read_pickle.html (Third Party Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-13091?: CVE-2020-13091 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Numfocus Pandas, classified under Deserialization of Untrusted Data. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2020-05-15.
How severe is CVE-2020-13091?: Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.