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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2026-72818 json

NLTK TweetTokenizer URL Pattern Backtracks Catastrophically on Naked-Domain-Like Input

published 2mo ago modified 16d ago also EUVD-2026-63729 , GHSA-qx2g-xrx7-vfh8 , PYSEC-2026-3870

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.7%
EPSS 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 55%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The URLS regular expression in nltk/tokenize/casual.py, compiled into TweetTokenizer.WORD_RE and applied by TweetTokenizer.tokenize, contains a naked-domain branch whose domain-label prefix [a-z0-9]+(?:[.\-][a-z0-9]+)* is unbounded. Input consisting of many alternating label separators can be partitioned in exponentially many ways, and because the branch also requires a trailing top-level domain that such input never supplies, the engine explores those partitions before failing at each offset. A few kilobytes of input therefore consumes seconds to minutes of single-threaded CPU, and the HANG_RE substitution performed before matching does not collapse the pattern. TweetTokenizer is intended for tokenizing untrusted social-media text, so any service that applies it, or the module-level casual_tokenize, to submitted text can be stalled per request without authentication. Version 3.10.1 bounds the label repetition.

Patch / fix

  • pypi nltk 3.10.1
  • nltk nltk 3.10.1
  • nltk Debian 14 3.10.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72818

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-72818 updated cvss 7.5

nltk: NLTK TweetTokenizer: Denial of Service via crafted URL input

  • Red Hat Lightspeed Core lightspeed-core/rag-tool-cpu-rhel9, lightspeed-core/lightspeed-stack-rhel9, lightspeed-core/rag-tool-cuda-12.9-rhel9 Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed openshift-lightspeed/lightspeed-service-api-rhel9
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 ansible-automation-platform-25/lightspeed-chatbot-rhel8
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Exploit Intelligence exploit-intelligence-tech-preview/vulnerability-analysis-rhel9
    not affected: vulnerable code not present
  • Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed openshift-lightspeed/lightspeed-ocp-rag-rhel9, openshift-lightspeed-tech-preview/lightspeed-rag-tool-rhel9
    not affected: vulnerable code not in execute path
  • Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-ogx-core-rhel9, rhoai/odh-ta-lmes-job-rhel9, rhoai/odh-llama-stack-core-rhel9, rhoai/odh-trustyai-garak-lls-provider-dsp-rhel9, rhoai/odh-trustyai-nemo-guardrails-server-rhel9, rhoai/odh-pipeline-runtime-pytorch-llmcompressor-cuda-py312-rhel9, +1 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.74% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 55% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/nltk/nltk/issues/3704 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 8.7 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
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
GitHub 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA 4.0 8.7 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/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
OSV 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi nltk
<3.10.1
3.10.1

Affected products

  • nltk nltk

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-1333 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.