CVE-2026-85999VulnerabilityPublished 6 Oct 2026Updated 1 Nov 2026

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

Affects manimSource 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 0.20.1_1 when convenient.

Data as of 1 Nov 2026, 22:58 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 0.20.1_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 1 Nov 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 manim to 0.20.1_1.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Homebrewmanim`pkg:brew/manim`Other threats	Affected >=0.19.0 <0.20.1_1	Fixed in 0.20.1_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 0.20.1_1 that fixes the issue by correcting the regex anchoring to avoid quadratic backtracking. Users should upgrade to version 0.20.1_1 or later to remediate this vulnerability. Until patched, avoid passing untrusted or user-controlled selectors to soupsieve or BeautifulSoup's select APIs.

Description

A Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability exists in soupsieve's whitespace/comment trimming regex RE_WS_END. This regex is used to trim trailing whitespace/comments from CSS selectors but is implemented with a pattern that causes quadratic time complexity (O(n²)) when processing long runs of whitespace or comments not exactly at the end of the string. This can cause significant CPU delays when compiling valid CSS selectors containing large whitespace gaps. The issue affects soupsieve versions prior to 0.20.1_1 and is exploitable when user-controlled selectors are passed to soupsieve or BeautifulSoup's selector APIs.

Impact

The vulnerability causes a denial of service condition by significantly increasing CPU usage and processing time when compiling CSS selectors with large whitespace or comment runs. This can stall the interpreter for several seconds (e.g., ~10 seconds for a 20 KB selector). It does not cause data leakage or code execution but impacts availability by making selector compilation expensive. Only applications that accept user-controlled CSS selectors are affected; those using only hard-coded selectors are not vulnerable.

Summary

The vulnerability arises from the RE_WS_END regex in soupsieve's css_parser.py, which is compiled as (?:WS|COMMENTS)*$ and used with .search() without anchoring at the start. Because .search() tries matching at every offset, a long run of whitespace or comments not at the string end causes the regex engine to repeatedly backtrack, resulting in O(n²) time complexity. This triggers on valid selectors such as 'a' followed by a large whitespace gap then 'b'. The issue is reproducible in soupsieve 2.8.4 and HEAD 2.9, and confirmed on Python 3.11 and 3.14. The vulnerability affects any application that passes user-controlled CSS selectors to soupsieve or BeautifulSoup's select functions. The root cause is the unanchored trailing whitespace/comment trimming regex combined with .search() usage.

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Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 1 Nov 2026, 20:01 UTC

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