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Fencer Intel
medium 5.3

CVE-2026-12261 json

Improper Access Control in nltk/nltk

published 3mo ago modified 17d ago also GHSA-ffj6-66c4-86gw , PYSEC-2026-3954 , EUVD-2026-54393

cvss
5.3
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 11%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

A vulnerability in `nltk.downloader` in nltk/nltk versions <= 3.9.4 allows for cross-package resource and model poisoning. The downloader extracts package archives into shared namespaces such as `corpora/` and `taggers/` instead of package-isolated roots, and validates package integrity only after the archive has been written and extracted. This design flaw enables one package to overwrite another package's trusted resources within the same namespace, making the changes immediately active through ordinary NLTK APIs. This issue persists across fresh interpreter restarts and can affect downstream workflows, including machine learning pipelines and reproducibility-sensitive environments.

Patch / fix

  • pypi nltk 3.10.0

Is CVE-2026-12261 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-12261 updated cvss 5.3

nltk: NLTK: Resource poisoning via improper package archive extraction

  • Red Hat Exploit Intelligence exploit-intelligence-tech-preview/vulnerability-analysis-rhel9
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Lightspeed Core lightspeed-core/rag-tool-cpu-rhel9, lightspeed-core/lightspeed-stack-rhel9, lightspeed-core/rag-tool-cuda-12.9-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed openshift-lightspeed/lightspeed-ocp-rag-rhel9, openshift-lightspeed/lightspeed-service-api-rhel9, openshift-lightspeed-tech-preview/lightspeed-rag-tool-rhel9
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 ansible-automation-platform-25/lightspeed-chatbot-rhel8
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-ta-lmes-job-rhel9, rhoai/odh-llama-stack-core-rhel9, rhoai/odh-trustyai-garak-lls-provider-dsp-rhel9, rhoai/odh-trustyai-nemo-guardrails-server-rhel9, rhoai/odh-pipeline-runtime-pytorch-llmcompressor-cuda-py312-rhel9, rhoai/odh-workbench-jupyter-pytorch-llmcompressor-cuda-py312-rhel9
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
3mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 11% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • huntr.com https://huntr.com/bounties/8b8c381e-08a8-4e4f-bb46-a320c96a364f referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 5.3 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
OSV 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
GitHub 3.0 5.3 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi nltk
<3.10.0
3.10.0

Affected products

  • nltk nltk/nltk

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.