Medium [CVE-2026-81723] Denial of Service via malformed XML corpus files
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-81723 affecting Exploit Intelligence, Lightspeed Core, OpenShift Lightspeed.
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Summary
NLTK versions before 3.10.3 contain a quadratic CPU exhaustion vulnerability in XMLCorpusView._read_xml_fragment() that rescans accumulated XML fragments on every 1 KiB block read. Attackers can provide malformed XML corpus files to cause severe CPU consumption and denial of service through affected readers like BNCCorpusReader.
A flaw was found in NLTK. The flaw occurs because the system repeatedly rescans accumulated XML fragments, leading to quadratic CPU exhaustion.
Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 5.9 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H). Weakness: CWE-776.
Affected Red Hat products: Exploit Intelligence; Lightspeed Core; OpenShift Lightspeed; Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2; Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI). Will not fix / out of support: Exploit Intelligence; Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.
Red Hat does not currently list a fixing RHSA for this CVE.
- < 3.10.3
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 52 minutes ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 52 minutes ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 52 minutes ago·verify at source
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