NLTK Stanford wrapper classes execute untrusted JAR files without verification
High7.8CVE-2026-12252 · Published Jul 4, 2026 · updated Oct 2, 2026
In nltk/nltk versions 3.9.3 and earlier, five Stanford interface classes (StanfordPOSTagger, StanfordNERTagger, StanfordParser, StanfordDependencyParser, and StanfordNeuralDependencyParser) are vulnerable to untrusted JAR code execution. These classes accept user-controllable JAR paths and execute them via the `java()` function, which invokes `subprocess.Popen()` without integrity verification. This vulnerability is identical to CVE-2026-0848, which was fixed for StanfordSegmenter by adding SHA256 verification. However, the fix was not applied to these additional classes, leaving them susceptible to arbitrary code execution when loading untrusted JAR files.
Affected versions
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| nltk PyPI | < 3.9.4 | 3.9.4 |
Details and references
- CVSS 3.0
- CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Severity from
- GitHub (reviewed advisory)
- Weakness
- CWE-94
- Also known as
- CVE-2026-12252, PYSEC-2026-2085
- nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-12252
- github.com/nltk/nltk/pull/3743
- github.com/nltk/nltk/commit/006f4b83d430147b067b81e2cddd226d6fa405c8
- github.com/nltk/nltk/commit/24777f0cb8c33ed2839d16e0f8169a3c312a6806
- github.com/nltk/nltk
- github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.3
- github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/nltk/PYSEC-2026-2085.yaml
- huntr.com/bounties/f5c93982-0cc9-4e2e-bb85-1b6ab29a2efb
More NLTK advisories
All NLTK| Date | Advisory | Severity | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 31 | Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK): ReDoS in NLTK ReviewsCorpusReader FEATURES regex | High7.5 | 3.10.0 |
| Jul 31 | NLTK: arbitrary file read | High7.5 | 3.10.0 |
| Jul 31 | NLTK: path traversal | High7.5 | 3.10.0 |
| Jul 25 | NLTK vulnerable to Eval Injection via collocations CLI arguments | High7.8 | 3.9.3 |
| Jul 4 | NLTK: code execution | High7.8 | 3.9.4 |
| Jun 16 | NLTK: path traversal | High7.5 | 3.10.0 |