CVE-2026-55099

icalendar: Algorithmic Complexity in Equality

State
Published
Severity
7.5 High
Published
Aug 25, 2026
Updated
Aug 26, 2026
Reserved
Jun 16, 2026

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Description

icalendar is an RFC 5545 compatible parser and generator of iCalendar files for Python. From 7.1.0 until 7.1.3, the Component equality method in src/icalendar/cal/component.py compares nested subcomponents with two membership loops, and each membership test invokes the same method on child components, causing O(2^n) work relative to nesting depth. Component.from_ical accepts arbitrarily nested BEGIN:VEVENT blocks without a depth limit, so an attacker can submit a sub-kilobyte .ics file containing equal nested subtrees and trigger the cost when an application performs equality, inequality, membership, deduplication, test-assertion, round-trip, or normalization comparisons. Parsing alone does not trigger the issue, and comparisons that differ early short-circuit, but a few hundred bytes can pin a CPU core for minutes or indefinitely, causing denial of service in calendar sync or import endpoints, invite processing, and other comparison paths. This issue is fixed in version 7.1.3.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HGitHub_M

Weaknesses

  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
  • CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

Affected Products

ProductVersions
icalendarcollective
  • >= 7.1.0, < 7.1.3Affected

References

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