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Unescaped header separators in whatstk build a regular expression that backtracks exponentially

Written by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5 from the sources below. Verify against them.

6.7MediumCNA
Exploited
No known exploitation
Fix
Fixed in 0.9.0
Who is exposed
Not reported

Do first: Upgrade to a fixed version: 0.9.0.

17Pcve.now Index 17 of 100 · methodology v3 · provisional
  • Exploitation?/40Exploitation: unknown (data gap). No CISA SSVC exploitation rating yet
  • Exposure?/25Exposure: unknown (data gap). No advisory context yet
  • Reach10/20Affects PyPI packages
  • Severity6.7/10CVSS 6.7
  • No patch0/5No signal

What would change the score

  • Would score about 72 if added to CISA KEV
  • Would score about 67 if CISA's SSVC rates exploitation active
  • Would score about 39 if advisories confirm default setups are exposed

CVE-2026-121577 is not in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. No public exploit code is tracked. It is rated CVSS 6.7 (medium) and affects whatstk; fixed in 0.9.0.

Published
Last modified
Published
Not listed in CISA KEV
17/100 · provisional
Fix
Fixed in 0.9.0
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub

Summary

The whatstk Python library (versions before 0.9.0, starting at 0.2.0) is affected, specifically its WhatsApp chat export parser. A specially crafted chat export with a malicious date separator can make the parser consume CPU indefinitely, or cause the calling program to crash with an uncaught exception.

Read the original description

Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity (CWE-1333) in generate_regex() (whatstk/whatsapp/parser.py) in whatstk from 0.2.0 before 0.9.0 allows a party that supplies a chat export to consume the CPU of the process that parses it for an unbounded time, because the function builds the header regular expression by replacing each %x code with its named capture group and leaves every other character of the header format in the pattern unescaped. A header whose date separator is a regular expression metacharacter therefore alters the pattern instead of matching itself: a separator of + quantifies the preceding capture group, giving (?P<day>\d{1,2})+(?P<month>\d{1,2})+(?P<year>\d{2,4}), and a run of digits that cannot complete the header then makes the engine try every way of partitioning that run. Header auto detection is enabled by default and derives the format from the text of the file, so the separator is taken from the export itself and no header format has to be passed by the caller. Separators of (, ) and \ instead raise re.PatternError, separators of *, | and ? raise TypeError, and separators of ^ and $ raise KeyError, none of which the library catches. This results in the parse of a file of a few hundred bytes consuming CPU without completing, or in an uncaught exception in the calling program.

What to do

  • Upgrade to a fixed version: 0.9.0.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. First seen by cve.now

Affected versions

  • whatstkPyPI

    From 0.2.0 · fixed in 0.9.0

Evidence 4

  1. Patch
  2. Patch
  3. Repository
  4. Link

Corrections

None so far.

Something wrong on this page? Report an error. Every fix is listed here.

FAQ

Questions about CVE-2026-121577

Is CVE-2026-121577 being exploited?

It is not in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, and CISA's SSVC assessment does not mark exploitation as active. That does not mean it has not been attacked: vendors and researchers can report attacks before CISA lists them. No public exploit code is tracked.Source: cve.now feed data

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-121577?

whatstk (PyPI): from 0.2.0 before 0.9.0.Source: cve.now feed data

How do I fix CVE-2026-121577?

Upgrade to a fixed version: 0.9.0.Source: cve.now feed data