CVE-2026-33236 PUBLISHED

NLTK has a Downloader Path Traversal Vulnerability (AFO) - Arbitrary File Overwrite

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 18.03.2026 Published: 20.03.2026 Updated: 20.03.2026

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
CVSS Score: 8.1

Product Status

Vendor nltk
Product nltk
Versions
  • Version <= 3.9.3 is affected

References

Problem Types

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