Staging Environment: Content and features may be unstable or change without notice.
Advisory details: vulnrichment / CVE-2026-33236
Advisory ID vulnrichment/CVE-2026-33236
Aliases
Summary 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.
Status Published
Exploitability 0.5
Weighted Severity 0.0
Risk
Affected and Fixed Packages Package Details
Introduced and Fixed Package Commit Patches Package Commit Patches Details
Weaknesses (1)
CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')
System Score Found at
cvssv3.1 8.1
ssvc Track
Reference id Reference type URL
89fe2ec2c6bae6e2e7a46dad65cc34231976ed8a Other https://github.com/nltk/nltk/commit/89fe2ec2c6bae6e2e7a46dad65cc34231976ed8a
GHSA-469j-vmhf-r6v7 Other https://github.com/nltk/nltk/security/advisories/GHSA-469j-vmhf-r6v7
No exploits are available.

No EPSS data available for this advisory.

Patch URL
There are no known patches.
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H Found at None
Attack Vector (AV) Attack Complexity (AC) Privileges Required (PR) User Interaction (UI) Scope (S) Confidentiality Impact (C) Integrity Impact (I) Availability Impact (A)

network

adjacent_network

local

physical

low

high

none

low

high

none

required

unchanged

changed

high

low

none

high

low

none

high

low

none
Vector: SSVCv2/E:P/A:Y/T:P/P:M/B:A/M:M/D:T/2026-03-23T16:46:32Z/ Found at None

Vector: SSVCv2/E:P/A:Y/T:P/P:M/B:A/M:M/D:T/2026-03-23T16:46:32Z/

Decision: Track

Source URL: https://github.com/cisagov/vulnrichment/blob/develop/2026/33xxx/CVE-2026-33236.json

Source Advisory: vulnrichment/CVE-2026-33236

View SSVC decision tree 
[{'Exploitation': 'poc'},
 {'Automatable': 'yes'},
 {'Technical Impact': 'partial'},
 {'Mission Prevalence': 'minimal'},
 {'Public Well-being Impact': 'material'},
 {'Mission & Well-being': 'medium'}]