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.
{
"cna_assigner": "VulnCheck",
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-1333"
],
"osv_generated_from": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/80xxx/CVE-2026-80206.json"
}{
"cpe": "cpe:2.3:a:nltk:nltk:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*",
"extracted_events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
},
{
"fixed": "3.10.3"
}
],
"source": [
"AFFECTED_FIELD",
"CPE_RANGE"
]
}