CVE-2026-78683 PUBLISHED

NLTK before 3.10.0 Remote Code Execution via Unsafe Pickle Deserialization

Assigner: VulnCheck
Reserved: 25.08.2026 Published: 25.08.2026 Updated: 25.08.2026

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: 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
CVSS Score: 9.4

Product Status

Vendor nltk
Product nltk
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0 to 3.10.0 (excl.)
  • Version 3.10.0 is unaffected

Credits

  • ekaf analyst

References

Problem Types

  • Deserialization of Untrusted Data CWE