There is a MEDIUM severity vulnerability affecting the pip project.

pip prior to version 26.1 would run self-update check functionality after installing wheel files which required importing well-known Python modules names. These module imports were intentionally deferred to increase startup time of the pip CLI. The patch changes self-update functionality to run before wheels are installed to prevent newly-installed modules from being imported shortly after the installation of a wheel package. Users should still review package contents prior to installation.

Please see the linked CVE ID for the latest information on affected versions:

• https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-6357
• https://github.com/pypa/pip/pull/13923