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Medium · 5.9 CVE-2026-80206 EUVD-2026-66397GHSA-vf76-f5cp-9846GHSA-w3v8-gmh9-3wv7PYSEC-2026-3751

NLTK 3.10.2 Regular Expression Denial of Service via tgrep

Published Aug 26, 2026 · Updated Aug 26, 2026 · Assigned by VulnCheck

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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
nltk nltk < 3.10.3 3.10.3

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 nltk 3.10.3-1 —
Debian 13 nltk No fix yet —
Debian 12 nltk No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS nltk No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS nltk No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS nltk No fix yet —
Show 4 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS nltk No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS nltk No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS nltk No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS nltk No fix yet —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
PyPI nltk < 3.10.3 3.10.3 GHSA-w3v8-gmh9-3wv7

References