VDB
CVE-2026-78680
CVE-2026-78680
PUBLISHED
CVSS 8.5 HIGH
Reported by VulnCheck · Published August 25, 2026
NLTK versions before 3.10.3 fail to use validated absolute paths when invoking the Graphviz dot binary in dependencygraph.dot2img and AlignedSent._repr_svg_, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code by placing a malicious dot binary in the search path or current working directory. Attackers can exploit bare-name binary resolution on Windows via the current working directory or on Unix-like systems via relative PATH entries to execute their binary instead of the legitimate Graphviz tool.
Risk Scores
CVSS 4.0
8.5
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
Affected Products
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| nltk | nltk | 0, 3.10.3 |
| chainguard | nemo | 0 |
| PyPI | nltk | 0 |
| nltk | nltk | 0, 3.10.3 |
| wolfi | open-webui | 0 |
| chainguard | open-webui | 0 |
Timeline
- Aug 25, 2026 EPSS Score
- Aug 25, 2026 CVE Published
- Sep 3, 2026 Security Advisory
- Sep 24, 2026 EPSS Score
- Sep 26, 2026 EPSS Score
- Oct 7, 2026 EPSS Score
- Oct 13, 2026 EPSS Score
- Oct 21, 2026 EPSS Score
- Oct 25, 2026 EPSS Score
References
- GitHub Security Advisory (GHSA-6hwm-xvph-95vm) vendor-advisory
- VulnCheck Advisory: NLTK before 3.10.3 Arbitrary Code Execution via Graphviz dot Binary third-party-advisory
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-78680 advisory
- https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-6hwm-xvph-95vm advisory
- https://github.com/nltk/nltk/commit/1a3cd1764ab3deb084fb66d0ffb4873717659538 patch
- https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.3 url