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Fencer Intel
medium 6.5

CVE-2026-65915 json

NLTK before 3.10.0 Arbitrary File Read via FileSystemPathPointer

published 3mo ago modified 28d ago also EUVD-2026-64309 , GHSA-72r2-7mfr-5xr9 , PYSEC-2026-3731

cvss
6.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 35%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

NLTK versions before 3.10.0 contain a logic bug in FileSystemPathPointer.open() where the sandbox validation check compares a normalized path against itself, making the security check permanently inert. Attackers can pass file:// URLs to nltk.data.load() to read arbitrary files accessible to the process user, including credentials and configuration files.

Patch / fix

  • pypi nltk 3.10.0
  • nltk nltk 3.10.0
  • nltk Debian 14 3.10.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-65915

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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-2026-65915 updated cvss 6.5

nltk: NLTK: Arbitrary file read due to logic bug in FileSystemPathPointer

  • Red Hat Exploit Intelligence exploit-intelligence-tech-preview/vulnerability-analysis-rhel9 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-tech-preview/lightspeed-rag-tool-rhel9 Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 ansible-automation-platform-25/lightspeed-chatbot-rhel8 Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-ogx-core-rhel9, 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, +1 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed openshift-lightspeed/lightspeed-service-api-rhel9
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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
2mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.41% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 35% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/nltk/nltk/security/advisories/GHSA-72r2-7mfr-5xr9 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 7.1 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
GitHub 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CNA 4.0 7.1 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi nltk
<3.10.0
3.10.0

Affected products

  • 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.

The maintainers of nltk/nltk published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.