Vulnerability Analysis
NLTK has a Downloader Path Traversal Vulnerability (AFO) - Arbitrary File Overwrite
CVE-2026-33236
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.
Path Traversal
No Active Exploit Signals
CVSS Base Score
8.1
HIGH
Exploitability:2.9
Impact Score:5.2
Temporal Score:-
EPSS:0.50%
Threat Intelligence Signals
CISA KEV
No
KEV Date Added
—
Ransomware Use
—
KEV Due Date
—
VulnCheck In-the-Wild
No
Nuclei Template
No
EPSS Score
0.498%
EPSS Percentile
39.5th pct
GHSA ID
GitHub Severity
HIGH
SSVC Exploitation
Proof of Concept
SSVC Automatable
Yes
Vulnerability Class
Path Traversal
Identity & Timeline
| Status | - |
| Assigning Authority | - |
| CVSS Version / Source | - |
| Reserved | - |
| Published | - |
| Patch Date (date_public) | - |
| Exploit DB Date | - |
| First GitHub PoC Date | - |
| Last Updated | - |
| Time to Patch (Days to fix) | - |
| Exploit Release Gap | - |
| PoC Release Gap | - |
| Exploit DB References | None identified |
Affected Products & Versions
| Vendor | Product | Affected Versions |
|---|---|---|
| No affected products specified. | ||
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