Symlink Attack Affecting nltk package, versions [,3.9.4)
Threat Intelligence
Snyk has a proof-of-concept or detailed explanation of how to exploit this vulnerability.
The probability is the direct output of the EPSS model, and conveys an overall sense of the threat of exploitation in the wild. The percentile measures the EPSS probability relative to all known EPSS scores. Note: This data is updated daily, relying on the latest available EPSS model version. Check out the EPSS documentation for more details.
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Test your applications- Snyk IDSNYK-PYTHON-NLTK-19233403
- published23 Aug 2026
- disclosed22 Aug 2026
- creditleduckhuong
Introduced: 22 Aug 2026
NewCVE-2026-70626 (opens in a new tab)How to fix?
Upgrade nltk to version 3.9.4 or higher.
Overview
nltk is a Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) is a Python package for natural language processing.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Symlink Attack via symlink handling in CorpusReader.open(). A local attacker can read arbitrary files outside the configured corpus root by placing symbolic links inside the corpus directory that resolve to files outside the intended boundary. Because path validation operates on the lexical path without validating the resolved symlink target, the symlink passes the directory restriction and is subsequently followed during file access.