Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-12243

high Nessus Plugin ID 324230

Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- NLTK version 3.9.4 is vulnerable to a path traversal attack due to an incomplete fix for GitHub Issue #3504. The `_UNSAFE_NO_PROTOCOL_RE` regex in `nltk/data.py` checks for literal `../` sequences but fails to account for percent-encoded traversal sequences such as `..%2f`. The `url2pathname()` function decodes these sequences after the validation step, allowing an attacker to bypass the protection. This vulnerability enables an attacker to read arbitrary files accessible to the Python process by controlling the resource name parameter passed to `nltk.data.load()` or `nltk.data.find()`. The issue affects applications that rely on NLTK for resource loading, including NLP web applications, Jupyter notebooks, and CLI tools. The default `pathsec.ENFORCE=False` setting exacerbates the impact by not blocking the file read at the `open()` stage. (CVE-2026-12243)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 324230

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2026_12243.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 7/1/2026

Updated: 7/1/2026

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3

Percentile: 23.72

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Temporal Score: 4.5

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-12243

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 7.1

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

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:11.0, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:20.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:25.10, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:nltk, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:16.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:24.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:18.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:nltk, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:13.0, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:22.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:14.0, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:12.0, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:26.04:-:lts

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 6/30/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-12243

Detections

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