VulnerabilityPublished 30 Oct 2026

CVE-2026-119194: pyasn1 has quadratic CPU use

Affects pyasn1Source GCVE Database

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Authoritative record:CVE-2026-119194· High 7.5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.5 High : upgrade to 0.6.5 soon.

Data as of 31 Oct 2026, 01:55 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.5High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

Thin evidence

One scorer or none

CVSS scores by source
CNA (GitHub_M)	CVSS 3.1	7.5

Patch: Available – fixed in 0.6.5

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

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 29 Oct 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 30 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade pyasn1 to 0.6.5.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
PyPIpyasn1	Affected >=0.3.3 <0.6.5	Fixed in 0.6.5

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AI-suggested

A fix is available in pyasn1 version 0.6.5. Users should upgrade to version 0.6.5 or later to remediate this vulnerability. No additional mitigation actions are required beyond applying the official patch.

Description

pyasn1 versions from 0.3.3 up to but not including 0.6.5 have a vulnerability causing quadratic CPU usage when decoding attacker-controlled BER, CER, or DER data without an ASN.1 schema. This occurs due to inefficient handling of tag sets during schemaless decoding, allowing crafted inputs with many distinct long tag IDs to exhaust CPU resources and degrade service availability. No confidentiality or integrity impacts are reported. The issue is fixed in version 0.6.5.

Impact

The vulnerability impacts availability by enabling an attacker to cause excessive CPU consumption during schemaless decoding of BER, CER, or DER data with crafted tag IDs. This can degrade or exhaust CPU resources, reducing service availability. There are no observed impacts on confidentiality or integrity.

Summary

The pyasn1 library, in versions >=0.3.3 and <0.6.5, exhibits a performance vulnerability in its schemaless BER, CER, and DER decoding routines. Specifically, the _decodeComponentsSchemaless method inserts every decoded component's TagSet into a growing set to distinguish tag sets, but this set grows unnecessarily large when processing attacker-controlled inputs with many distinct long tag IDs that cause hash collisions. This results in quadratic CPU time growth as each insertion requires comparisons against an increasing number of tags. The vulnerability allows an attacker to cause disproportionate CPU consumption, potentially leading to denial of service by exhausting CPU resources. The flaw is addressed in pyasn1 version 0.6.5 by limiting the growth of the classification set after detecting two distinct tag sets while preserving decoding correctness.

CWE-407Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: Low
An algorithm in a product has an inefficient worst-case computational complexity that may be detrimental to system performance and can be triggered by an attacker, typically using crafted manipulations that ensure that the worst case is being reached.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 31 Oct 2026, 01:55 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-407

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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