UBUNTU-CVE-2026-85999 (CVE-2026-85999)
Vulnerability from osv_ubuntu – Published: 2026-09-17 16:18 – Updated: 2026-09-23 23:36 – Source websiteSoup Sieve is a CSS selector library designed to be used with Beautiful Soup 4. Prior to 2.9, selector_iter in src/soupsieve/css_parser.py trims the raw selector with RE_WS_END, an end-anchored WSC whitespace-and-comment expression used with search(), so the regular expression engine retries a greedy scan at every starting offset. An attacker-controlled valid selector containing a long internal whitespace run, or a selector containing a long CSS comment run followed by another token, causes quadratic CPU work before tokenization. User-controlled selectors can reach the path through soupsieve.compile() and BeautifulSoup.select(), while applications using only hard-coded selectors are unaffected. This root cause is separate from the IDENTIFIER and VALUE backtracking vulnerability because the cost occurs in RE_WS_END.search during trimming rather than token matching. The resulting CPU consumption can hold the Python GIL, exhaust workers, and stall a service without causing memory corruption or code execution. The issue is fixed in version 2.9.
{
"affected": [
{
"ecosystem_specific": {
"binaries": [
{
"binary_name": "python-soupsieve",
"binary_version": "1.9.5+dfsg-1"
},
{
"binary_name": "python3-soupsieve",
"binary_version": "1.9.5+dfsg-1"
}
]
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:20.04:LTS",
"name": "soupsieve",
"purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/soupsieve@1.9.5+dfsg-1?arch=source\u0026distro=focal"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
],
"versions": [
"1.9.2+dfsg-2ubuntu1",
"1.9.4+dfsg-1",
"1.9.5+dfsg-1"
]
},
{
"ecosystem_specific": {
"binaries": [
{
"binary_name": "python3-soupsieve",
"binary_version": "2.3.1-1"
}
]
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:22.04:LTS",
"name": "soupsieve",
"purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/soupsieve@2.3.1-1?arch=source\u0026distro=jammy"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
],
"versions": [
"2.2.1-2",
"2.3-1",
"2.3.1-1"
]
},
{
"ecosystem_specific": {
"binaries": [
{
"binary_name": "python3-soupsieve",
"binary_version": "2.5-1"
}
]
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:24.04:LTS",
"name": "soupsieve",
"purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/soupsieve@2.5-1?arch=source\u0026distro=noble"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
],
"versions": [
"2.4.1-2",
"2.5-1"
]
},
{
"ecosystem_specific": {
"binaries": [
{
"binary_name": "python3-soupsieve",
"binary_version": "2.8.3-1"
}
]
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:26.04:LTS",
"name": "soupsieve",
"purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/soupsieve@2.8.3-1?arch=source\u0026distro=resolute"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
],
"versions": [
"2.7-2",
"2.8.1-1",
"2.8.3-1"
]
}
],
"aliases": [],
"details": "Soup Sieve is a CSS selector library designed to be used with Beautiful Soup 4. Prior to 2.9, selector_iter in src/soupsieve/css_parser.py trims the raw selector with RE_WS_END, an end-anchored WSC whitespace-and-comment expression used with search(), so the regular expression engine retries a greedy scan at every starting offset. An attacker-controlled valid selector containing a long internal whitespace run, or a selector containing a long CSS comment run followed by another token, causes quadratic CPU work before tokenization. User-controlled selectors can reach the path through soupsieve.compile() and BeautifulSoup.select(), while applications using only hard-coded selectors are unaffected. This root cause is separate from the IDENTIFIER and VALUE backtracking vulnerability because the cost occurs in RE_WS_END.search during trimming rather than token matching. The resulting CPU consumption can hold the Python GIL, exhaust workers, and stall a service without causing memory corruption or code execution. The issue is fixed in version 2.9.",
"id": "UBUNTU-CVE-2026-85999",
"modified": "2026-09-23T23:36:45Z",
"published": "2026-09-17T16:18:00Z",
"references": [
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-85999"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-85999"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://github.com/facelessuser/soupsieve/security/advisories/GHSA-j934-xhv5-fg8f"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://github.com/facelessuser/soupsieve/commit/cf198fcddc9230f06ed39f974eba0ce076b85cda"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://github.com/facelessuser/soupsieve/releases/tag/2.9"
}
],
"related": [],
"schema_version": "1.7.0",
"severity": [
{
"score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L",
"type": "CVSS_V3"
},
{
"score": "medium",
"type": "Ubuntu"
}
],
"upstream": [
"CVE-2026-85999"
]
}
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