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Medium 5.9Published Aug 26, 2026

CVE-2026-80206NLTK 3.10.2 Regular Expression Denial of Service via tgrep

Updated under an hour ago ()

Does this affect you?

It affects nltk. Add what you run to find out whether that includes you.

No exploitation reported and no EPSS estimate yet.

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.

CVSS
5.9 MEDIUM (v3.1, CNA)CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-1333
Known exploited
Not in CISA's KEV catalog
EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days)
Not loaded for this CVE
Assigned by
VulnCheck
NVD analysis
Analyzed
Record last updated
Aug 26, 2026
First seen by InfoSec Signals
Oct 9, 2026

Affected products

Affected products
nltk nltk
nltk:nltk (from the name)
before 3.10.3; 3.10.3 not affected
CNA record
nltk nltk
nltk:nltk
before 3.10.3
NVD

References

  • vendor-advisory, exploit
  • third-party-advisory

The CVE record is authoritative. Products marked “from the name” were identified from the CNA's free-text names, not a CPE, and are matched less certainly. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.

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