CVE-2026-121691
What it is
Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (CWE-409) in the ZIP loader of whatstk from 0.7.0 before 0.9.0 allows a party that supplies a chat export to exhaust the memory and the disk of the process that parses it, because _str_from_file() (whatstk/whatsapp/parser.py) calls zip_ref.extractall() with no bound on the size of the members and no check of the compression ratio, then reads the extracted file in full with f.read(). The only guard on the archive counts the extracted files and raises when there is not exactly one, but it runs after extractall() has already written them, so it does not prevent the cost. _clean_text() then passes the whole text through unicodedata.normalize("NFKD", text), which holds a second copy, and the parse builds a list of regular expression matches and a DataFrame over it, so peak memory is a multiple of the decompressed text rather than of the archive. A ZIP is a documented input of WhatsAppChat.from_source() and df_from_whatsapp(), and is the form in which WhatsApp exports a chat on iOS, so the attacker supplies the whole file. This results in a small upload costing hundreds of megabytes of memory and of disk, and in the process being killed where that exceeds what is available.
At a glance
- Exploitability
- Can be exploited locally on the machine without logging in, but needs a user to act. High risk of service disruption.
- Fix
- A patch, advisory or fixed version is referenced. Upgrade or apply it.
Timeline
- ReservedThe CVE id was reserved by its CNA
- PublishedDisclosed publicly on CVE.org and NVD
- Last updatedMost recent change to the record
Why it ranks here
- Exploited in the wild: no, CISA does not list it.
- Exploit odds: not scored yet.
- Severity: 6.7 MEDIUM (CVSS).
- Fix: a patch or advisory is linked.
Details
- Published
- Last modified
- Weakness
- CWE-409
- Record status
- Received
Attack profile CVSS 4.0 · 6.7
- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Attack requirements
- None
- Privileges needed
- None
- User interaction
- Active
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
Raw vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/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
Is it in your code?
Hand this to your coding agent. It searches your project for the affected products and checks versions. Nothing leaves your machine.
Read https://cve-list.com/agent/cve/CVE-2026-121691.md and follow it. Check whether this project is affected by CVE-2026-121691. Read only. Don't change anything and don't upload my code. Tell me yes, no or not sure, with the file as proof.
Fix and advisories
- https://github.com/lucasrodes/whatstk/commit/01d66d8
- https://github.com/lucasrodes/whatstk/pull/182
- https://github.com/lucasrodes/whatstk/releases/tag/v0.9.0