CVE-2026-81725
NLTK before 3.10.3 Regular Expression Denial of Service via Pl196xCorpusReader
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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 guide yetNo remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:
Patch and advisory references
References (2)
SSVC — Action Prioritization
SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.
CVSS
- Attack Vector
- NETWORK
- Complexity
- HIGH
- Privileges
- NONE
- User Interaction
- NONE
- Scope
- UNCHANGED
- Confidentiality
- NONE
- Integrity
- NONE
- Availability
- LOW
Quick Info
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