CVE-2008-3908: Princeton University Wordnet

High severity, CVSS 10.0. EPSS: 4.4% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Multiple buffer overflows in Princeton WordNet (wn) 3.0 allow context-dependent attackers to execute arbitrary code via (1) a long argument on the command line; a long (2) WNSEARCHDIR, (3) WNHOME, or (4) WNDBVERSION environment variable; or (5) a user-supplied dictionary (aka data file). NOTE: since WordNet itself does not run with special privileges, this issue only crosses privilege boundaries when WordNet is invoked as a third party component.

Affected products

• Princeton University Wordnet: version 3.0 only

Published 2008-09-04. Last modified 2026-06-16.