CVE-2026-78683

critical

Assigned by CNA: vulncheck

Published 2026-08-25 · Modified 2026-08-25

Discuss on Community Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

9.6

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVSS v4 NEW

9.4

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

VIR risk

9.6

Description

NLTK before 3.10.0 (affected versions <=3.9.4) contains an unsafe pickle deserialization vulnerability in the TransitionParser.parse() method (nltk/parse/transitionparser.py). The method calls pickle_load() with the default restricted=False, routing deserialization through WarningUnpickler, which does not override find_class() and therefore permits arbitrary class resolution. When an application loads an attacker-crafted model file, embedded pickle gadget chains execute arbitrary Python code with the privileges of the user running the application. NLTK provides a RestrictedUnpickler for safe deserialization, but it is not used by production code paths. Fixed in 3.10.0.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

96%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

Propose a mitigation on Community Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

References

CWEs

CWE-502

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.