Machine-written summary
Summary written by Claude Haiku from the source advisory. Not reviewed by a person.
NLTK versions before 3.10.3 run the Graphviz `dot` program by bare name, so the operating system may resolve it from the current working directory or a relative `PATH` entry. An attacker who can place a file named `dot` in such a location could get it executed in place of Graphviz, which means arbitrary code execution. Upgrade to NLTK 3.10.3, which runs a validated absolute path to `dot`.
Not analysed yet
We haven’t published our analysis of this Advisory yet. Once a person has reviewed it, this page will say what’s vulnerable, what has to be true for your app to be affected, and how to check.
Severity and exploitation
| Score | Rating | CVSS | Vector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.5 | High | 4.0 | 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 | CNA (VulnCheck) |
- CISA KEV Not listed.
- EPSS 0.0018, the 7th percentile, on 5 Nov 2026: FIRST’s estimate of the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.
Timeline
- 31 Oct 2026, 14:10 UTC First seen by agentprime
- 31 Oct 2026, 14:10 UTC Confirmed by OSV
Sources
- GitHub Advisory Database: GHSA-6hwm-xvph-95vm
- OSV: GHSA-6hwm-xvph-95vm
- github.com/nltk/nltk/security/advisories/GHSA-6hwm-xvph-95vm
- nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-78680
- github.com/nltk/nltk/commit/1a3cd1764ab3deb084fb66d0ffb4873717659538
- github.com/nltk/nltk
- github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.3
- www.vulncheck.com/advisories/nltk-before-arbitrary-code-execution-via-graphviz-dot-binary