Denial of service via unbounded token regex backtracking
Published Aug 26, 2026 · Updated Aug 26, 2026
Regular expression denial of service in NLTK before 3.10.0 allows attackers to saturate a Python process via crafted token searches. Text.findall() delegates to TokenSearcher.findall(), which rewrites the token query and applies re.findall() across a joined corpus without bounding repeated rescans or backtracking. Reachability requires an application to pass attacker-controlled corpus content or token-search expressions; exploitation pins a worker and interrupts service for that process.
Summary
What happened
Regular expression denial of service in NLTK before 3.10.0 allows attackers to saturate a Python process via crafted token searches. Text.findall() delegates to TokenSearcher.findall(), which rewrites the token query and applies re.findall() across a joined corpus without bounding repeated rescans or backtracking. Reachability requires an application to pass attacker-controlled corpus content or token-search expressions; exploitation pins a worker and interrupts service for that process.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-80205
- Published
- Aug 26, 2026
- Updated
- Aug 26, 2026
- Vendor
- NLTK Project
- Product
- NLTK
- Classifications
- CWE-1333, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- Unavailable
- Privileges
- Unavailable
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Aug 26, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Aug 26, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
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- Affected versionversion=0 <3.10.0
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- NLTK Text.findall token-search reproducerproof of concept · demonstrated
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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