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CVE-2026-12261

6.5 medium SSVC exploitation: poc Analyzed

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.

Fix

Nothing published yet: no patch, vendor advisory or mitigation reference on NVD, no vendor advisory in the News for this CVE, not in CISA's KEV, no fixed package version. BaselineWatch does not guess at one.

Change history 1

  1. First seenCVSS 6.5 · nltkNVD modified 2026-10-23 21:10

Affected (CPE criteria) 1

  • cpe:2.3:a:nltk:nltk:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References 2