Detections
Analytics

SCA: security update for nltk (GHSA-848c-c2cx-j7qx)

high Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security Plugin ID 445911

Description

There are packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability referenced in the following CVE:

 - NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit) before version 3.9.3 contains an eval injection vulnerability in the
 nltk.collocations module that allows an attacker who controls command-line arguments to execute arbitrary
 Python code. When collocations.py is invoked directly, the __main__ block passes command-line arguments
 directly to eval() as suffixes of BigramAssocMeasures without allowlist validation or sanitization,
 enabling an attacker to supply a Python expression that escapes the intended attribute lookup and executes
 arbitrary code including OS commands via the os module. (CVE-2025-71408)

Solution

Update the nltk library and its related packages to version 3.9.3 or later.

See Also

https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-848c-c2cx-j7qx

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 445911

Version: Revision 1.1

Type: Local

Family: SCA Checks

Published: 8/13/2026

Updated: 8/13/2026

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.9

Percentile: 58.17

Vendor

Vendor Severity: High

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.8

Temporal Score: 5.3

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2025-71408

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 7

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.5

Threat Score: 7.1

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:P

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Vulnerability Information

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 7/25/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 7/24/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2025-71408

cwe: CWE-95