Skip to content
Fencer Intel
critical 9.6

CVE-2026-78683 json

NLTK before 3.10.0 Remote Code Execution via Unsafe Pickle Deserialization

published 3mo ago modified 30d ago also EUVD-2026-65229 , GHSA-rhp5-r9x4-f5g2 , PYSEC-2026-3734

cvss
9.6
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 44%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

NLTK before 3.10.0 (affected versions <=3.9.4) contains an unsafe pickle deserialization vulnerability in the TransitionParser.parse() method (nltk/parse/transitionparser.py). The method calls pickle_load() with the default restricted=False, routing deserialization through WarningUnpickler, which does not override find_class() and therefore permits arbitrary class resolution. When an application loads an attacker-crafted model file, embedded pickle gadget chains execute arbitrary Python code with the privileges of the user running the application. NLTK provides a RestrictedUnpickler for safe deserialization, but it is not used by production code paths. Fixed in 3.10.0.

Patch / fix

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

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-78683

Is CVE-2026-78683 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.

Check with Fencer

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-2026-78683 updated cvss 9.6

nltk: NLTK before 3.10.0 Remote Code Execution via Unsafe Pickle Deserialization

  • Red Hat Lightspeed Core lightspeed-core/lightspeed-stack-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed openshift-lightspeed/lightspeed-ocp-rag-rhel9, openshift-lightspeed-tech-preview/lightspeed-rag-tool-rhel9
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 ansible-automation-platform-25/lightspeed-chatbot-rhel8
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.4 rhoai/odh-ta-lmes-job-rhel9 1791470318, rhoai/odh-trustyai-garak-lls-provider-dsp-rhel9 1791785804
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:84734
  • Red Hat Lightspeed Core lightspeed-core/rag-tool-cpu-rhel9, lightspeed-core/rag-tool-cuda-12.9-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed openshift-lightspeed/lightspeed-service-api-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-ogx-core-rhel9, rhoai/odh-llama-stack-core-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 Red Hat OpenShift AI 3.4 rhoai/odh-cli-rhel9 1791509689, rhoai/rhai-cli-rhel9 1791509689, rhoai/odh-automl-rhel9 1791535789, rhoai/odh-mlflow-rhel9 1791865967, rhoai/odh-autorag-rhel9 1791557539, rhoai/odh-trainer-rhel9 1791869783, +98 more
    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
total
Assessed
2mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.51% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 44% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/nltk/nltk/security/advisories/GHSA-rhp5-r9x4-f5g2 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 9.4 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H
CNA 3.1 9.6 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
CNA 4.0 9.4 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/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
  • CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data

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.