Vulnerability-Lookup

Vulnerability from bitnami_vulndb

Published

2026-08-17 05:55

Modified

2026-08-19 09:09

Summary

Quadratic Behavior in xml.etree.ElementPath Index Predicates

Details

Element.findall() and fully-consumed Element.iterfind() exhibit O(n^2) time complexity when using XPath index predicates (e.g. [1], [last()], [last()-N]) on XML documents with many same-tag siblings. Element.find() is only affected when the first match is near the end of the sibling list, such as with [last()] or [last()-N]; .//item[1] short-circuits after the first match.

JSON

To clipboard

{
  "affected": [
    {
      "package": {
        "ecosystem": "Bitnami",
        "name": "python",
        "purl": "pkg:bitnami/python"
      },
      "ranges": [
        {
          "events": [
            {
              "introduced": "0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "3.10.21"
            },
            {
              "introduced": "3.11.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "3.11.16"
            },
            {
              "introduced": "3.12.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "3.12.14"
            },
            {
              "introduced": "3.13.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "3.13.15"
            },
            {
              "introduced": "3.14.0"
            },
            {
              "fixed": "3.14.7"
            }
          ],
          "type": "SEMVER"
        }
      ],
      "severity": [
        {
          "score": "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:H/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X",
          "type": "CVSS_V4"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "aliases": [
    "CVE-2026-6879"
  ],
  "database_specific": {
    "cpes": [
      "cpe:2.3:a:python:python:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*"
    ],
    "severity": "Low"
  },
  "details": "`Element.findall()` and fully-consumed `Element.iterfind()` exhibit `O(n^2)` time complexity when using XPath index predicates (e.g. `[1]`, `[last()]`, `[last()-N]`) on XML documents with many same-tag siblings. `Element.find()` is only affected when the first match is near the end\u00a0 of the sibling list, such as with `[last()]` or `[last()-N]`;\u00a0 `.//item[1]` short-circuits after the first match.",
  "id": "BIT-python-2026-6879",
  "modified": "2026-08-19T09:09:14.600Z",
  "published": "2026-08-17T05:55:11.544Z",
  "references": [
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/02c08e6b747ac43d0d866a4ffa916bedf3423f81"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/037965c00a427cba5c05447efadc67c51a492e85"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/0583f24ae678993e3f7939f51ad5bcae5ad9dc70"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/2ffab083782968a4d732738f4f1dff6bbd69d2b0"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/390337b8ba1658833fdef379e1739c9f9533a8db"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/96510a3758f4a075f43223afdee3b6ee1a7a7f02"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/cb409342a19f25656f62e679f8bac265fe1442c3"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/152674"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/152676"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://mail.python.org/archives/list/security-announce@python.org/thread/7YMZ6DDZVR26TJJBVO3RDNBAVGHNYAKR/"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-6879"
    }
  ],
  "schema_version": "1.6.2",
  "summary": "Quadratic Behavior in xml.etree.ElementPath Index Predicates"
}

CVE-2026-6879 (GCVE-0-2026-6879)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-07-28 13:46 – Updated: 2026-08-13 00:27

Title

Quadratic Behavior in xml.etree.ElementPath Index Predicates

Summary

`Element.findall()` and fully-consumed `Element.iterfind()` exhibit `O(n^2)` time complexity when using XPath index predicates (e.g. `[1]`, `[last()]`, `[last()-N]`) on XML documents with many same-tag siblings. `Element.find()` is only affected when the first match is near the end of the sibling list, such as with `[last()]` or `[last()-N]`; `.//item[1]` short-circuits after the first match.

Severity

2 (Low)


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

SSVC

Exploitation: none Automatable: no Technical Impact: partial

CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)

Decision recorded 2026-07-28 14:49 UTC

CWE

CWE-407 - Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

Assigner

PSF mitre root

References

10 references

URL	Tags
https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/152676	patch
https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/152674	issue-tracking
https://mail.python.org/archives/list/security-an…	vendor-advisory
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/2ffab083…	patch
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/02c08e6b…	patch
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/390337b8…	patch
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/cb409342…	patch
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/96510a37…	patch
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/037965c0…	patch
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/0583f24a…	patch

Impacted products

1 product

Vendor	Product	Version
Python Software Foundation	CPython	Affected: 0 , < 3.10.21 (python) Affected: 3.11.0 , < 3.11.16 (python) Affected: 3.12.0 , < 3.12.14 (python) Affected: 3.13.0 , < 3.13.15 (python) Affected: 3.14.0 , < 3.14.7 (python) Affected: 3.15.0a1 , < 3.15.0rc1 (python)

Credits

dm (https://github.com/DarkaMaul) Petr Viktorin (https://github.com/encukou)

Show details on NVD website

JSON

To clipboard

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                "id": "CVE-2026-6879",
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                  },
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                "role": "CISA Coordinator",
                "timestamp": "2026-07-28T14:49:33.309576Z",
                "version": "2.0.3"
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      "metrics": [
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            "attackRequirements": "PRESENT",
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            "exploitMaturity": "NOT_DEFINED",
            "privilegesRequired": "HIGH",
            "providerUrgency": "NOT_DEFINED",
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            "subConfidentialityImpact": "NONE",
            "subIntegrityImpact": "NONE",
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    "datePublished": "2026-07-28T13:46:30.650Z",
    "dateReserved": "2026-04-22T18:26:56.743Z",
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}

Sightings

Author	Source	Type	Date	Other

Nomenclature

Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.

Detection rules are retrieved from Rulezet.

The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base model, served locally by ML-Gateway. They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.

Related by attack behaviour

Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.