CVE-2026-81725
LOWDescription
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.
How to fix
TridentStack Control can deploy fixes like this automatically across your Windows, macOS, and Linux fleet. See how it works
Remediation is compiled from vendor and distribution security advisories. Always confirm against the linked source for your exact version and platform.
CVSS v3 Vector
Exploitability
Impact
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Exploit Intelligence
Low risk: more likely to be exploited than 13% of all known CVEs.
References
Related Vulnerabilities
Other CWE-400 (Resource Exhaustion) vulnerabilities, ordered by exploit likelihood. View all
| CVE | Severity | CVSS | EPSS | Exploited | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2023-44487 | High | 7.5 | 100% | KEV | Fix |
| CVE-2021-44228 | Critical | 10.0 | 100% | KEV + Ransom | Fix |
| CVE-2011-3192 | High | 7.8 | 99% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2019-11478 | Medium | 5.3 | 93% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2023-21547 | High | 7.5 | 89% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2024-25617 | Medium | 5.3 | 89% | - | Fix |
Common questions
How do I fix CVE-2026-81725?
Upgrade nltk on debian unstable to 3.10.3-1 or later.
Is CVE-2026-81725 being actively exploited?
Not that we know of. CVE-2026-81725 is not in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Its EPSS score of 0.22% is the estimated probability that it will be exploited in the next 30 days. That is higher than 13% of all scored CVEs.
How severe is CVE-2026-81725?
CVE-2026-81725 has a CVSS v3 base score of 3.7, rated low. CVSS rates the technical impact if the vulnerability is exploited, not how likely that is, so weigh it alongside the exploit-prediction score when you decide what to patch first.
What does CVE-2026-81725 affect?
Published advisories record a fix for nltk (Debian). Only products with a sourced advisory are listed, so treat this as what we can cite rather than a complete inventory.
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Markdown
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This product uses NVD data but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS scores courtesy of FIRST.org (https://www.first.org/epss). Source: CISA KEV Catalog. Data as of 2026-08-28.