CVE-2026-12261 PUBLISHED

Improper Access Control in nltk/nltk

Assigner: @huntr_ai
Reserved: 15.06.2026 Published: 07.08.2026 Updated: 07.08.2026

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
CVSS Score: 5.3

Product Status

Vendor nltk
Product nltk/nltk
Versions
  • affected from unspecified to latest (incl.)

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-284 Improper Access Control CWE