NLTK from 3.2.5 before 3.10.4 contains an algorithmic complexity vulnerability in TreebankWordTokenizer.span_tokenize that allows remote attackers to cause quadratic CPU consumption through repeated list.pop(0) calls. Attackers can submit long runs of double-quote characters to services span-tokenizing untrusted text, exhausting a CPU core and degrading availability.
CVSS Details
- CVSS 4.0 Base Score: 6.9 (MEDIUM)
- CVSS 4.0 Vector: (CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X)
- CVSS 3.1 Base Score: 5.3
- CVSS 3.1 Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L)
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