CVE-2026-85999VulnerabilityPublished 20 Sep 2026Updated 30 Oct 2026

checkov · Soup Sieve: Polynomial-time ReDoS (O(n²))

Affects checkovSource GCVE Database

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Authoritative record:CVE-2026-85999· Medium 5.3

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.3 Medium : upgrade to 3.3.0_1 when convenient.

Data as of 30 Oct 2026, 20:25 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.3Medium

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

EPSS: 0.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 49% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 3.3.0_1

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

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

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: 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 impacted component 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 impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 17 Sep 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 checkov to 3.3.0_1.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Homebrewcheckov`pkg:brew/checkov`Other threats	Affected >=1.0.855 <3.3.0_1	Fixed in 3.3.0_1

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

AI-suggested

A patch is available in soupsieve version 3.3.0_1 that fixes the regex to avoid the quadratic-time behavior. Users should upgrade to version 3.3.0_1 or later to remediate this issue. Until patched, avoid passing user-controlled CSS selectors to soupsieve or BeautifulSoup selector functions. No other mitigations are indicated by the vendor advisory.

Description

A Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability exists in soupsieve's whitespace/comment trimming regex RE_WS_END. The regex is used to trim trailing whitespace/comments from CSS selectors but is unanchored at the start, causing the regex engine to perform quadratic-time backtracking on valid selectors with long whitespace or comment runs. This can cause significant CPU delays (e.g., ~10 seconds for a 20 KB selector). The vulnerability affects soupsieve versions from 1.0.855 up to but not including 3.3.0_1. A fix is available in version 3.3.0_1.

Impact

This vulnerability allows an attacker who can supply a user-controlled CSS selector to cause a denial of service by triggering quadratic-time regex evaluation, leading to high CPU usage and significant delays in processing. The impact is limited to applications that accept user-controlled selectors passed to soupsieve or BeautifulSoup's selector functions. Applications using only hard-coded selectors are not affected. The vulnerability does not affect confidentiality or integrity but causes availability degradation due to CPU exhaustion.

Summary

The vulnerability arises from the use of an unanchored regex pattern RE_WS_END = re.compile(r'{WSC}*$') in soupsieve's selector_iter function, which trims trailing whitespace and comments from CSS selectors. Because the regex is only anchored at the end ($) and not at the start (^), the .search() method tries matching at every offset in the input string. When the input contains a long run of whitespace or CSS comments not exactly at the end, the regex engine greedily consumes the run and then fails to match the end anchor, causing backtracking and retrying at the next offset. This results in O(n²) time complexity for the regex match. The issue triggers on valid selectors, such as a descendant combinator with a long whitespace gap (e.g., 'a' + ' '*n + 'b'), without requiring malformed input. The vulnerability is reproducible on soupsieve versions 2.8.4 and 2.9, and on Python 3.11.15 and 3.14.6. The root cause is the lack of a start anchor in the trailing whitespace/comment trimming regex, which can be fixed by anchoring the regex or using a loopless approach. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-85999 and has a CVSS 3.1 score of 5.3 (medium severity).

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Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 30 Oct 2026, 18:06 UTC

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