CVE-2026-81725

NLTK before 3.10.3 Regular Expression Denial of Service via Pl196xCorpusReader

Published Aug 27, 2026 CVSS 4.0 · 6.3 Medium EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
Description
NLTK before 3.10.3 contains a regular expression denial of service vulnerability in Pl196xCorpusReader that allows attackers to cause quadratic CPU consumption by supplying malformed TEI blocks with many unmatched opening tags. Attackers can exploit lazy regex patterns in the read_block method through public APIs like words() and tagged_words() to force repeated rescans and achieve near-quadratic runtime growth.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-8mpw-7fpc-4gqj NLTK: Pl196xCorpusReader has quadratic ReDoS on malformed TEI blocks
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description NLTK before 3.10.3 contains a regular expression denial of service vulnerability in Pl196xCorpusReader that allows attackers to cause quadratic CPU consumption by supplying malformed TEI blocks with many unmatched opening tags. Attackers can exploit lazy regex patterns in the read_block method through public APIs like words() and tagged_words() to force repeated rescans and achieve near-quadratic runtime growth.
Title NLTK before 3.10.3 Regular Expression Denial of Service via Pl196xCorpusReader
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 28, 2026, 3:58 PM
Reserved
Aug 27, 2026, 11:15 AM
Status
Analyzed
Published
Aug 27, 2026, 5:21 PM
Modified
Sep 1, 2026, 8:06 PM
Severity
Important
Public date
Aug 27, 2026, 2:51 PM