Detections
Analytics

SCA: security update for nltk (GHSA-ffj6-66c4-86gw)

medium Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security Plugin ID 472163

Description

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

 - A vulnerability in `nltk.downloader` in nltk/nltk versions <= 3.9.4 allows for cross-package resource and
 model poisoning. The downloader extracts package archives into shared namespaces such as `corpora/` and
 `taggers/` instead of package-isolated roots, and validates package integrity only after the archive has
 been written and extracted. This design flaw enables one package to overwrite another package's trusted
 resources within the same namespace, making the changes immediately active through ordinary NLTK APIs.
 This issue persists across fresh interpreter restarts and can affect downstream workflows, including
 machine learning pipelines and reproducibility-sensitive environments. (CVE-2026-12261)

Solution

Update the nltk library and its related packages to version 3.10.0 or later.

See Also

https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-ffj6-66c4-86gw

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 472163

Version: Revision 1.1

Type: Local

Family: SCA Checks

Published: 10/3/2026

Updated: 10/3/2026

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3

Percentile: 23.63

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Medium

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 5.8

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-12261

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.5

Temporal Score: 5.7

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

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

Vulnerability Information

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 8/7/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/7/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-12261

cwe: CWE-284