CVE-2026-81725: NLTK Denial of Service Vulnerability

{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-8mpw-7fpc-4gqj",
  "modified" : "2026-09-08T20:28:46Z",
  "published" : "2026-09-08T20:28:46Z",
  "aliases" : [ "CVE-2026-81725" ],
  "summary" : "NLTK: Pl196xCorpusReader has quadratic ReDoS on malformed TEI blocks",
  "details" : "### Summary\n\n`Pl196xCorpusReader` still parses whole TEI blocks with multiple lazy regexes over attacker-controlled text. A malformed file with many opening tags and no matching closing tags forces repeated rescans and produces quadratic CPU growth in public reader APIs.\n\n### Details\n\n- **Vulnerability type:** Regular-expression denial of service\n- **Affected component:** `nltk.corpus.reader.pl196x.TEICorpusView.read_block` and `Pl196xCorpusReader` public methods\n- **Affected versions:** Published `3.9.4` and current source `v3.10.0-rc2` both reproduced.\n- **Patched versions:** Not yet patched\n- **Root cause:** Lazy `.*?` whole-block regexes rescan untrusted XML-like blocks from each opening-tag position.\n\nThe parser uses regexes for paragraphs, sentences, and word tags across the whole `<text>` block. When the attacker supplies many unmatched opening tags, each attempt scans toward the end of the block and fails, then restarts from the next opening tag. There is near four-times runtime growth each time the number of malformed `<p>` tags doubled, through normal public calls such as `words()` and `tagged_words()`.\n\n### PoC\n\n**Preconditions**\n- The application parses attacker-influenced PL196X or TEI-like corpus files through public reader APIs.\n\n**Steps**\n1. Create a corpus file with a valid header followed by a `<text>` block that contains many opening tags and no matching closing tags.\n2. Instantiate `Pl196xCorpusReader` on that corpus.\n3. Call `words()` or `tagged_words()` and measure elapsed time as the malformed tag count doubles.\n4. Observe near quadratic growth instead of near-linear behavior.\n\n**Minimal reproducible excerpt**\n\n```text\nsize=1000 0.014s\nsize=2000 0.057s\nsize=4000 0.231s\nsize=8000 0.927s\n```\n\n### Impact\n\nA consumer that accepts attacker-influenced corpus files can be forced into heavy CPU use and parser-thread stalling before the application concludes the input contains no valid content.\n\n### Remediation\n\nReplace the whole-block lazy-regex parser with a linear parser or bounded tokenizer, and add regression tests that assert near-linear behavior on malformed inputs with many unmatched tags.",
  "severity" : [ {
    "type" : "CVSS_V4",
    "score" : "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N"
  } ],
  "affected" : [ {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "PyPI",
      "name" : "nltk"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "3.10.3"
      } ]
    } ],
    "database_specific" : {
      "last_known_affected_version_range" : "<= 3.10.2"
    }
  } ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/nltk/nltk/security/advisories/GHSA-8mpw-7fpc-4gqj"
  }, {
    "type" : "ADVISORY",
    "url" : "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-81725"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/nltk/nltk/commit/7808692d451b962711005d954859bb83aabcf8fa"
  }, {
    "type" : "PACKAGE",
    "url" : "https://github.com/nltk/nltk"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.3"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/nltk/PYSEC-2026-3752.yaml"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/nltk-before-3.10.3-regular-expression-denial-of-service-via-pl196xcorpusreader"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-1333", "CWE-400" ],
    "severity" : "MODERATE",
    "github_reviewed" : true,
    "github_reviewed_at" : "2026-09-08T20:28:46Z",
    "nvd_published_at" : null
  }
}