CVE-2026-6879
Quadratic Behavior in xml.etree.ElementPath Index Predicates
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Description
`Element.findall()` and fully-consumed `Element.iterfind()` exhibit `O(n^2)` time complexity when using XPath index predicates (e.g. `[1]`, `[last()]`, `[last()-N]`) on XML documents with many same-tag siblings. `Element.find()` is only affected when the first match is near the end of the sibling list, such as with `[last()]` or `[last()-N]`; `.//item[1]` short-circuits after the first match.
Affected
Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.
Remediation
No guide yetNo remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:
Patch and advisory references
- https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/152676
- https://mail.python.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/7YMZ6DDZVR26TJJBVO3RDNBAVGHNYAKR/
- https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/2ffab083782968a4d732738f4f1dff6bbd69d2b0
- https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/02c08e6b747ac43d0d866a4ffa916bedf3423f81
- https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/390337b8ba1658833fdef379e1739c9f9533a8db
References (10)
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