CVE-2025-71408

HIGH

NLTK < 3.9.2 Eval Injection via collocations.py Command-Line Arguments

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

Description

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.

References (5)

Core 5
Core References
Exploit technical-description exploit
Researcher Disclosure
https://aydinnyunus.github.io/2026/06/07/command-injection-nltk-collocations-eval/
Release Notes release-notes patch
Release Notes
https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/3.9.3
Issue Tracking issue-tracking patch
Pull Request
https://github.com/nltk/nltk/pull/3465

Scores

CVSS v3 7.8
EPSS 0.0016
EPSS Percentile 5.4%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation poc
Automatable no
Technical Impact total

Details

CWE
CWE-95
Status published
Products (1)
ntlk/ntlk < 3.9.3
Published Jul 24, 2026
Tracked Since Jul 25, 2026