CVE-2026-80206 PUBLISHED

NLTK 3.10.2 Regular Expression Denial of Service via tgrep

Assigner: VulnCheck
Reserved: 25.08.2026 Published: 26.08.2026 Updated: 26.08.2026

NLTK before 3.10.3 contains a regular expression denial of service (ReDoS) vulnerability in the tgrep module. The _tgrep_node_action function compiles user-supplied regular expressions embedded in /regex/ pattern nodes and executes them via re.search against tree node labels without any validation or timeout. An attacker who controls the tgrep pattern (e.g., via tgrep_positions() or tgrep_compile() exposed to external input) can supply a pattern that triggers catastrophic backtracking, causing indefinite CPU saturation that blocks the Python process.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS Score: 8.2

Product Status

Vendor nltk
Product nltk
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0 to 3.10.3 (excl.)
  • Version 3.10.3 is unaffected

Credits

  • infycore reporter
  • ekaf analyst
  • agent-kira finder

References

Problem Types

  • Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity CWE