CVE-2026-85999

What it is

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.

At a glance

Exploitability

Can be exploited over the network without logging in. Limited direct impact.

Exploit odds

0.6% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days (EPSS).

Fix

A patch, advisory or fixed version is referenced. Upgrade or apply it.

Timeline

1. 2026-09-17 16:18 UTC PublishedDisclosed publicly on CVE.org and NVD
2. 2026-09-23 18:12 UTC Last updatedMost recent change to the record

Why it ranks here

• Exploited in the wild: no, CISA does not list it.
• Exploit odds: 0.6% in the next 30 days (EPSS).
• Severity: 5.3 MEDIUM (CVSS).
• Fix: a patch or advisory is linked.

Details

Published

2026-09-17 16:18 UTC

Last modified

2026-09-23 18:12 UTC

Exploit probability

0.6% · EPSS, next 30 days

Weakness

CWE-400 · Uncontrolled resource consumption

Record status

Awaiting Analysis

Attack profile CVSS 3.1 · 5.3

Attack vector

Network

Complexity

Low

Privileges needed

None

User interaction

None

Scope

Unchanged

Confidentiality

None

Integrity

None

Availability

Low

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-2026-85999.md and follow it. Check whether this project is affected by CVE-2026-85999. Read only. Don't change anything and don't upload my code. Tell me yes, no or not sure, with the file as proof.

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