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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.8

CVE-2024-39705 json

ntlk unsafe deserialization vulnerability

published 2024-06-27 2 y ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also GHSA-cgvx-9447-vcch , PYSEC-2024-167 , EUVD-2024-0118

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.3%
EPSS 1.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 71%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

NLTK through 3.8.1 allows remote code execution if untrusted packages have pickled Python code, and the integrated data package download functionality is used. This affects, for example, averaged_perceptron_tagger and punkt.

Patch / fix

  • pypi nltk 3.9
  • nltk Debian 14, Debian 13 3.9.1-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-39705

  • python-nltk openSUSE Tumbleweed 3.10.1-1.1
  • python-nltk Package Hub 15 SP5, openSUSE Leap 15.5 3.7-bp155.3.3.1
  • python-nltk Package Hub 15 SP6, openSUSE Leap 15.6 3.7-bp156.4.3.1
  • python-nltk openSUSE Tumbleweed 3.8.1-2.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:11469-1openSUSE-SU-2024:0222-1openSUSE-SU-2024:0221-1openSUSE-SU-2024:14103-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2024-39705 updated cvss 7.5

nltk: Remote Code Execution (RCE) via untrusted packages

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
total
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

1.35% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 71% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CNA 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
GitHub 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi nltk
<3.9
3.9

Affected products

  • nltk nltk

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data
  • CWE-300 Channel Accessible by Non-Endpoint

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.