CVE-2026-33236

unknown

Published 2026-03-19 · Modified 2026-03-25

CVSS v3

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

CVSS v2

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VIR risk

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Description

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.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

30%

Patch ETA

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Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: debian — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-33236

OS impact

OS	Version	Status
debian	bookworm	affected
debian	bullseye	affected
debian	forky	affected
debian	sid	affected
debian	trixie	affected

Package impact

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable	Fixed
PyPI	nltk	`<=3.9.2`

References

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.