Vulnerability Details : CVE-2021-43854
Potential exploit
NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit) is a suite of open source Python modules, data sets, and tutorials supporting research and development in Natural Language Processing. Versions prior to 3.6.5 are vulnerable to regular expression denial of service (ReDoS) attacks. The vulnerability is present in PunktSentenceTokenizer, sent_tokenize and word_tokenize. Any users of this class, or these two functions, are vulnerable to the ReDoS attack. In short, a specifically crafted long input to any of these vulnerable functions will cause them to take a significant amount of execution time. If your program relies on any of the vulnerable functions for tokenizing unpredictable user input, then we would strongly recommend upgrading to a version of NLTK without the vulnerability. For users unable to upgrade the execution time can be bounded by limiting the maximum length of an input to any of the vulnerable functions. Our recommendation is to implement such a limit.
Vulnerability category: Denial of service
Products affected by CVE-2021-43854
- cpe:2.3:a:nltk:nltk:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2021-43854
1.37%
Probability of exploitation activity in the next 30 days
EPSS Score History
~ 78 %
Percentile, the proportion of vulnerabilities that are scored at or less
CVSS scores for CVE-2021-43854
Base Score | Base Severity | CVSS Vector | Exploitability Score | Impact Score | Score Source | First Seen |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
5.0
|
MEDIUM | AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P |
10.0
|
2.9
|
NIST | |
7.5
|
HIGH | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
3.9
|
3.6
|
GitHub, Inc. |
CWE ids for CVE-2021-43854
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The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.Assigned by: security-advisories@github.com (Primary)
References for CVE-2021-43854
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https://github.com/nltk/nltk/commit/1405aad979c6b8080dbbc8e0858f89b2e3690341
Resolved serious ReDoS in PunktSentenceTokenizer (#2869) · nltk/nltk@1405aad · GitHubPatch;Third Party Advisory
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https://github.com/nltk/nltk/security/advisories/GHSA-f8m6-h2c7-8h9x
Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity in nltk (word_tokenize, sent_tokenize) · Advisory · nltk/nltk · GitHubExploit;Patch;Third Party Advisory
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https://github.com/nltk/nltk/issues/2866
word_tokenize/EN hangs on incorrect strings · Issue #2866 · nltk/nltk · GitHubExploit;Issue Tracking;Patch;Third Party Advisory
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https://github.com/nltk/nltk/pull/2869
Resolved serious ReDoS in PunktSentenceTokenizer by tomaarsen · Pull Request #2869 · nltk/nltk · GitHubExploit;Patch;Third Party Advisory
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