CVE-2026-66393

high

Description

NLTK versions before 3.9.4 contain an unbounded recursion vulnerability in JSONTaggedDecoder.decode_obj() that allows attackers to cause denial of service by supplying deeply nested JSON structures. Attackers can craft JSON payloads exceeding the recursion limit to trigger an unhandled RecursionError that crashes the Python process.

References

https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/nltk-before-denial-of-service-via-jsontaggeddecoder

https://github.com/nltk/nltk/security/advisories/GHSA-rf74-v2fm-23pw

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-08-22

Updated: 2026-08-22

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 7.8

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Severity: High

CVSS v3

Base Score: 7.5

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Severity: High

CVSS v4

Base Score: 8.7

Vector: 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

Severity: High