Vulnerability · Published Aug 22, 2026 · Assigned by VulnCheck

CVE-2026-62383nltk IPIPANCorpusReader Symlink Arbitrary File Read

Medium 5.5

In plain English

A medium-severity path traversal in nltk from nltk. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 8% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)5.5Medium

Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 92.1% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

nltk versions before 3.10.2 contain a symlink-based arbitrary file read vulnerability in IPIPANCorpusReader methods that bypass nltk.pathsec validation entirely. Attackers can place a symlink in the corpus root directory and read arbitrary files accessible to the process by calling channels(), domains(), categories(), or fileids() methods with the symlink filename.

Affected packages & fixed versions

Ecosystem	Package	Fixed in	Advisory
Debian:12	nltk	no fix listed	DEBIAN-CVE-2026-62383
Debian:13	nltk	no fix listed	DEBIAN-CVE-2026-62383
Debian:14	nltk	3.10.3-1	DEBIAN-CVE-2026-62383
PyPI	nltk	3.10.2	GHSA-3hhw-38pf-pxj6
PyPI	nltk	3.10.2	PYSEC-2026-3726
Ubuntu:26.10	nltk	no fix listed	UBUNTU-CVE-2026-62383

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
nltk	nltk	3.10.0 – before 3.10.2

Weakness: CWE-22 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

References

GitHub Security Advisory (GHSA-3hhw-38pf-pxj6) vendor-advisory
VulnCheck Advisory: nltk IPIPANCorpusReader Symlink Arbitrary File Read third-party-advisory