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CVE PROGRAM SOURCE RECORD9.4 Critical

CVE-2026-78683

NLTK before 3.10.0 Remote Code Execution via Unsafe Pickle Deserialization

Description

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.

Affected products

Version statuses are supplied by the assigning organization. Consult the original record for detailed ranges and platform conditions.

nltk nltk

Default version status: unaffected

  • 0 to < 3.10.0affected
  • 3.10.0unaffected
pkg:pypi/nltk

References