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CVE-2026-12243 Detail

Description

NLTK version 3.9.4 is vulnerable to a path traversal attack due to an incomplete fix for GitHub Issue #3504. The `_UNSAFE_NO_PROTOCOL_RE` regex in `nltk/data.py` checks for literal `../` sequences but fails to account for percent-encoded traversal sequences such as `..%2f`. The `url2pathname()` function decodes these sequences after the validation step, allowing an attacker to bypass the protection. This vulnerability enables an attacker to read arbitrary files accessible to the Python process by controlling the resource name parameter passed to `nltk.data.load()` or `nltk.data.find()`. The issue affects applications that rely on NLTK for resource loading, including NLP web applications, Jupyter notebooks, and CLI tools. The default `pathsec.ENFORCE=False` setting exacerbates the impact by not blocking the file read at the `open()` stage.


Metrics

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CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

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URL Source(s) Tag(s)
CISA-ADP, huntr.dev

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') huntr.dev  

Change History

2 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2026-12243
NVD Published Date:
06/29/2026
NVD Last Modified:
06/30/2026
Source:
huntr.dev