CVE-2026-78683

critical · 9.4

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.

9.4

CVSS

0.5%

EPSS (exploit prob.)

43rd

EPSS percentile

2026-08-25

Published

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Weaknesses

CWE-502

Affected products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
nltk	nltk	< 3.10.0

Check a specific version with /api/v1/cve/match.

References

Query this programmatically:

curl https://evil-db.io/api/v1/cve/CVE-2026-78683