CVE-2026-6879 — Quadratic Behavior in xml.etree.ElementPath Index Predicates
`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 docu…
Published: 2026-07-28 · CVSS: 2.0 · CVSS 4.0
`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.
Source: CVE Program · Revision 8b16575c39f1e1810c5e863010da073d2d3285e7