CVE-2026-66393VulnerabilityPublished 23 Aug 2026Updated 29 Oct 2026

Safety: Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) has unbounded recursion in JSONTaggedDecoder.decode_obj() may cause DoS

Affects safetySource GCVE Database

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.1 Medium : upgrade to 3.7.0_7 when convenient.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 07:30 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score

5.1Medium

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

Patch: Available – fixed in 3.7.0_7

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Attack Requirements: None
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None
Vulnerable system integrity: None
Vulnerable system availability: Low
Subsequent system confidentiality: None
Subsequent system integrity: None
Subsequent system availability: None

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

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable system is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or through terminal emulation (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., using social engineering techniques to trick a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: The attacker must take no measurable action to exploit the vulnerability. The attack requires no target-specific circumvention to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable system.
Attack Requirements: None: The successful attack does not depend on the deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system. The attacker can expect to be able to reach the vulnerability and execute the exploit under all or most instances of the vulnerability.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files of the vulnerable system to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any human user, other than the attacker.
Vulnerable system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the Vulnerable System are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the Subsequent System or all confidentiality impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the Subsequent System or all integrity impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the Subsequent System or all availability impact is constrained to the Vulnerable System.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 23 Aug 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 29 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 safety to 3.7.0_7.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Homebrewsafety`pkg:brew/safety`Other threats	Affected <3.7.0_7	Fixed in 3.7.0_7

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

Description

### Summary `JSONTaggedDecoder.decode_obj()` in `nltk/jsontags.py` calls itself recursively without any depth limit. A deeply nested JSON structure exceeding `sys.getrecursionlimit()` (default: 1000) will raise an unhandled `RecursionError`, crashing the Python process. ### Affected code File: `nltk/jsontags.py`, lines 47–52 ```python @classmethod def decode_obj(cls, obj): if isinstance(obj, dict): obj = {key: cls.decode_obj(val) for (key, val) in obj.items()} elif isinstance(obj, list): obj = list(cls.decode_obj(val) for val in obj) ``` ### Proof of Concept ```python import sys, json from nltk.jsontags import JSONTaggedDecoder depth = sys.getrecursionlimit() + 50 # e.g. 1050 payload = '{"x":' * depth + "null" + "}" * depth # Raises RecursionError, crashing the process json.loads(payload, cls=JSONTaggedDecoder) ``` ### Impact Any code path that passes externally-supplied JSON to `JSONTaggedDecoder` is vulnerable to denial of service. The severity depends on whether such a path exists in the calling code (e.g. `nltk/data.py`). ### Suggested Fix Add a depth parameter with a hard limit: ```python @classmethod def decode_obj(cls, obj, _depth=0): if _depth > 100: raise ValueError("JSON nesting too deep") if isinstance(obj, dict): obj = {key: cls.decode_obj(val, _depth + 1) for (key, val) in obj.items()} elif isinstance(obj, list): obj = list(cls.decode_obj(val, _depth + 1) for val in obj) ```

References

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