vulnerability / NVI-00013807 / Revision 1
NLTK: Pl196xCorpusReader has quadratic ReDoS on malformed TEI blocks
GitHub lists this reviewed advisory for nltk. Published version ranges and source prerequisites are shown below; this is not an inspection of a visitor’s application.
This report has not inspected your inventory, configuration, deployed build, reachability or evidence. A catalog listing and a severity score do not establish exposure or compromise.
01 / Meaning
Why it matters
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02 / Applicability
The affected context
Affected versions, configuration prerequisites and known exclusions are public. Confirm each one against the deployed service.
nltk
source listed<= 3.10.2
### Summary `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. ### Details - **Vulnerability type:** Regular-expression denial of service - **Affected component:** `nltk.corpus.reader.pl196x.TEICorpusView.read_block` and `Pl196xCorpusReader` public methods - **Affected versions:** Published `3.9.4` and current source `v3.10.0-rc2` both reproduced. - **Patched versions:** Not yet patched - **Root cause:** Lazy `.*?` whole-block regexes rescan untrusted XML-like blocks from each opening-tag position. The parser uses regexes for paragraphs, sentences, and word tags across the whole `` 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 `` tags doubled, through normal public calls such as `words()` and `tagged_words()`. ### PoC **Preconditions** - The application parses attacker-influen
03 / Response
What to do next
- investigate
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04 / Limits
What this report cannot establish
- Customer inventory, deployment, reachability and exploitation have not been inspected.
05 / Provenance
Sources you can inspect
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- GHSA-8mpw-7fpc-4gqj ↗
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- Revision 1 ·
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