Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs ('XML Entity Expansion') Affecting nltk package, versions <3.10.3-1


Severity

Recommended
0.0
high
0
10

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Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.29% (22nd percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-DEBIANUNSTABLE-NLTK-19256962
  • published25 Aug 2026
  • disclosed25 Aug 2026

Introduced: 25 Aug 2026

NewCVE-2026-78681  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-776  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Debian:unstable nltk to version 3.10.3-1 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream nltk package and not the nltk package as distributed by Debian. See How to fix? for Debian:unstable relevant fixed versions and status.

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.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1