CVE-2026-81723

NLTK before 3.10.3 Quadratic CPU Exhaustion via XMLCorpusView

Published Aug 27, 2026 CVSS 4.0 · 6.3 Medium EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
Description
NLTK versions before 3.10.3 contain a quadratic CPU exhaustion vulnerability in XMLCorpusView._read_xml_fragment() that rescans accumulated XML fragments on every 1 KiB block read. Attackers can provide malformed XML corpus files to cause severe CPU consumption and denial of service through affected readers like BNCCorpusReader.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-vp2x-qp44-57v7 NLTK: Quadratic CPU Exhaustion in `XMLCorpusView._read_xml_fragment()`
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'poc', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description NLTK versions before 3.10.3 contain a quadratic CPU exhaustion vulnerability in XMLCorpusView._read_xml_fragment() that rescans accumulated XML fragments on every 1 KiB block read. Attackers can provide malformed XML corpus files to cause severe CPU consumption and denial of service through affected readers like BNCCorpusReader.
Title NLTK before 3.10.3 Quadratic CPU Exhaustion via XMLCorpusView
First Time appeared Nltk
Nltk nltk
Weaknesses CWE-400
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:nltk:nltk:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Nltk
Nltk nltk
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 3.7, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L'}

cvssV4_0

{'score': 6.3, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
VulnCheck
Published
Updated
Aug 31, 2026, 6:12 PM
Reserved
Aug 27, 2026, 11:13 AM
Status
Awaiting Analysis
Published
Aug 27, 2026, 5:21 PM
Modified
Sep 24, 2026, 8:44 PM
Severity
Moderate
Public date
Aug 27, 2026, 2:51 PM