CVE-2026-118036

Telerik AI document processing can exhaust resources or hang its host

Progress Software · Telerik Document Processing AI summarization, question answering and PDF processing

First documented disclosure · Review checkpoint

Summary

Crafted documents or text can terminate or stall the host process.

Severity and exploitation evidence

High · 7.5/10 · CVSS 3.1. Severity source.

Exploitation not established: The reviewed primary sources do not establish malicious exploitation or a confirmed victim incident.

Exploitation evidence source

Technical severity is not a measure of observed attacks or of risk to your deployment. Attempts, demonstrations, and successful compromise retain the qualifications in the source.

How the weakness works

Unbounded recursion, loops, algorithmic complexity and allocations affect document parsing and AI processing paths.

Conditions required

Ability to submit a crafted PDF or document text to a vulnerable host; the vendor’s network vector requires no authentication.

Potential impact

Denial of service; confidentiality or integrity compromise is not established.

Affected versions and configurations

Versions before 2026.3.1027; affected AI packages include Telerik.Windows.Documents.AIConnector, Telerik.Documents.AIConnector and Telerik.Documents.AI.RAG.

Fix and mitigation status

2026.3.1027.

Practical next steps

Upgrade; enforce document-size, processing-time and resource limits.

Operating lesson

Treat document preprocessing as an untrusted boundary before model inference.

Evidence and limits

The full vendor advisory and CNA record are dated October 28. The date-shaped fixed version does not establish an earlier public disclosure. This CVE groups several resource-exhaustion mechanisms; no attack campaign is reported.

Sources