CVE-2025-71408
Publication date 24 July 2026
Last updated 7 August 2026
Ubuntu priority
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.
Status
| Package | Ubuntu Release | Status |
|---|---|---|
| nltk | 26.04 LTS resolute |
Needs evaluation
|
| 24.04 LTS noble |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 22.04 LTS jammy |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 20.04 LTS focal |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 18.04 LTS bionic |
Needs evaluation
|
|
| 14.04 LTS trusty |
Needs evaluation
|
Severity score breakdown
CVSS version:
Base score
8.5 · High
Vector: 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
Base score
7.8 · High
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
References
Other references
- https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-71408
- https://aydinnyunus.github.io/2026/06/07/command-injection-nltk-collocations-eval/
- https://github.com/nltk/nltk/pull/3465
- https://github.com/nltk/nltk/commit/66f14096d952ec8f04934f515e027534bd4eb0ac
- https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/3.9.3
- https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/nltk-eval-injection-via-collocations-py-command-line-arguments