CVE-2026-78681
Medium
Elevated severity or exploit probability.
CVSS base
7.5
HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS — probability of exploitation (30 days)
0.3%
22.3th percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness / dates
CWE-776
Published 2026-08-25 · modified 2026-09-01
CVSS breakdown
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
| Attack Vector | N | Network |
| Attack Complexity | L | Low |
| Privileges Required | N | None |
| User Interaction | N | None |
| Scope | U | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | N | None |
| Integrity | N | None |
| Availability | H | High |
Timeline
- 2026-08-25 — Published (NVD)
- 2026-09-01 — Last modified (NVD)
Description
NLTK versions before 3.10.3 use xml.etree.ElementTree to parse XML in multiple modules, which honors entity declarations in document DTDs. Attackers can craft XML payloads with nested entity declarations that expand from hundreds of bytes to megabytes in memory, causing denial of service.