BIT-libpython-2026-6879: Quadratic Behavior in xml.etree.ElementPath Index Predicates

Published Jul 28, 2026
·
Updated

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.

Affected Software

1 affected component
Python Software Foundation Python

Event History

Jul 28, 2026
CVE Published
via OSV·01:46 PM
Data Sourced
via OSV·01:46 PM
DescriptionSeverity

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