CVE-2026-81725 (GCVE-0-2026-81725)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-08-27 14:51 – Updated: 2026-08-28 15:58
VLAI
Title
NLTK before 3.10.3 Regular Expression Denial of Service via Pl196xCorpusReader
Summary
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.
SSVC
Exploitation: none Automatable: no Technical Impact: partial
CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)
Decision recorded 2026-08-27 18:24 UTC
CWE
  • CWE-400 - Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
References
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version CPE status
nltk nltk Affected: 0 , < 3.10.3 (semver)
Unaffected: 3.10.3 (semver)
    cpe:2.3:a:nltk:nltk:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Create a notification for this product.
Date Public
2026-08-12 00:00
Show details on NVD website

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Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.

Sightings

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Nomenclature

  • Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
  • Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
  • Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
  • Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
  • Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.

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