CVE-2026-81722 (GCVE-0-2026-81722)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-08-27 14:51 – Updated: 2026-08-27 17:49
VLAI
Title
nltk PorterStemmer before 3.10.3 Quadratic-time DoS
Summary
nltk PorterStemmer in versions <= 3.10.2 (fixed in 3.10.3) contains an inefficient-algorithmic-complexity denial of service in PorterStemmer.stem(). The _is_consonant() helper walks backward over the entire run of trailing 'y' characters on every call, and _measure() invokes it for each stem position, causing O(n^2) behavior. A single ~20-50 KB untrusted token consisting of a long run of the letter 'y' followed by a matching suffix (e.g., 'ness') can pin a CPU core for seconds to minutes, causing availability impact.
Severity
8.7 (High)
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
7.5 (High)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
SSVC
Exploitation: poc Automatable: yes Technical Impact: partial
CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)
Decision recorded 2026-08-27 17:49 UTC
CWE
  • CWE-407 - Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity
Assigner
References
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version
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.
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  • 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.


Detection rules are retrieved from Rulezet.


Related by attack behaviour

Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.