Medium severity · published Aug 26, 2026
CVE-2026-80206
NLTK 3.10.2 Regular Expression Denial of Service via tgrep
5.9
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
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 vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 38% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
NL
nltk · nltk
before 3.10.3 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-80206
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-80206
Exploit
https://github.com/nltk/nltk/security/advisories/GHSA-w3v8-gmh9-3wv7
Third Party Advisory
https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/nltk-3.10.2-regular-expression-denial-of-service-via-tgrep
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