CVE-2026-81724

NLTK before 3.10.3 Denial of Service via Uncontrolled Recursion

Published Aug 27, 2026 CVSS 4.0 · 6.9 Medium EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
Description
NLTK before 3.10.3 contains an uncontrolled recursion vulnerability in nltk.featstruct.FeatStructReader that allows unauthenticated attackers to cause a denial of service by supplying deeply nested feature-structure input. Attackers can craft trivial payloads with nested brackets that exceed Python's recursion limit and raise an unhandled RecursionError, crashing applications that parse user-supplied feature structures or feature grammars.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-cw6x-m8jw-qmrh NLTK: Uncontrolled recursion in nltk.featstruct.FeatStructReader causes unhandled RecursionError (DoS) via deeply nested feature-structure input
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'yes', 'Exploitation': 'poc', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description NLTK before 3.10.3 contains an uncontrolled recursion vulnerability in nltk.featstruct.FeatStructReader that allows unauthenticated attackers to cause a denial of service by supplying deeply nested feature-structure input. Attackers can craft trivial payloads with nested brackets that exceed Python's recursion limit and raise an unhandled RecursionError, crashing applications that parse user-supplied feature structures or feature grammars.
Title NLTK before 3.10.3 Denial of Service via Uncontrolled Recursion
First Time appeared Nltk
Nltk nltk
Weaknesses CWE-674
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:nltk:nltk:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Nltk
Nltk nltk
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 5.3, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L'}

cvssV4_0

{'score': 6.9, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/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 27, 2026, 6:29 PM
Reserved
Aug 27, 2026, 11:15 AM
Status
Analyzed
Published
Aug 27, 2026, 5:21 PM
Modified
Aug 31, 2026, 7:06 PM
Severity
Important
Public date
Aug 27, 2026, 2:51 PM