Most recent entries from all

BREW-acronym-CVE-2026-62383 — NLTK: Symlink-based arbitrary file read in IPIPANCorpusReader, bypasses nltk.pathsec entirely

Affected: Homebrew: acronym

## Summary

`IPIPANCorpusReader` (`nltk/corpus/reader/ipipan.py`) exposes public methods, `channels()`, `domains()`, `categories()`, and `fileids(channels=...)`, that accept a caller supplied `fileids` list and read a file via a completely unprotected builtin `open()` call, with no `nltk.pathsec` involvement at all. A symlink placed inside the corpus root, with a name containing no separators or `..`, passes NLTK's existing traversal checks and is opened directly, reading a file from anywhere on the filesystem the process can access.

## Root cause

All four methods route through `_get_tag()`:

```python def _get_tag(self, f, tag): tags = [] with open(f) as infile: # builtin open(), no pathsec involvement header = infile.read() ... ```

`f` arrives via `_list_header_files()` / `_list_morph_files_by()`, both of which call:

```python f.replace("morph.xml", "header.xml") ```

on the result of `self.abspath(...)` or `self.abspaths(...)`. `FileSystemPathPointer` subclasses `str`, so `.replace()` returns a plain Python string, silently discarding the `PathPointer` wrapper. That plain string is handed straight to builtin `open()`.

This is a more severe variant of the same CWE-59 class already fixed elsewhere in this codebase (`CorpusReader.open()`, `NKJPCorpusReader.add_root()`, and the recent `FramenetCorpusReader` fix): those route file access through `nltk.pathsec.validate_path()`, at minimum the global, non-scoped check, before opening. Here, converting…

CVE-2026-62383 — nltk IPIPANCorpusReader Symlink Arbitrary File Read

Affected: nltk

nltk versions before 3.10.2 contain a symlink-based arbitrary file read vulnerability in IPIPANCorpusReader methods that bypass nltk.pathsec validation entirely. Attackers can place a symlink in the corpus root directory and read arbitrary files accessible to the process by calling channels(), domains(), categories(), or fileids() methods with the symlink filename.