CVE-2026-33236

Summary

NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit) is a suite of open source Python modules, data sets, and tutorials supporting research and development in Natural Language Processing. In versions 3.9.3 and prior, the NLTK downloader does not validate the subdir and id attributes when processing remote XML index files. Attackers can control a remote XML index server to provide malicious values containing path traversal sequences (such as ../), which can lead to arbitrary directory creation, arbitrary file creation, and arbitrary file overwrite. Commit 89fe2ec2c6bae6e2e7a46dad65cc34231976ed8a patches the issue.

Affected Software

Weaknesses

• CWE-22: CWE-22: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')

ADP Enrichment

CISA ADP Vulnrichment

• SSVC:
• Exploitation: poc
  • Automatable: yes
  • Technical Impact: partial

nltk: NLTK: Arbitrary file overwrite and creation via path traversal in XML index files

Additional References

• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-33236
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2449824
• https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-33236.json
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:10184
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:19712

References

• https://github.com/nltk/nltk/security/advisories/GHSA-469j-vmhf-r6v7
• https://github.com/nltk/nltk/commit/89fe2ec2c6bae6e2e7a46dad65cc34231976ed8a

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