Vulnerability in Nltk

CVE-2026-80205

NLTK versions before 3.10.0 contain a regular expression denial of service vulnerability in Text.findall() and TokenSearcher.findall() methods that accept user-supplied regular expressions without validation or timeout. Attackers can supply crafted regex patterns that cause catastrophic backtracking, resulting in indefinite CPU saturation and denial of service to all users of the Python process.

Vulnerability class: ReDoS (Regular Expression Denial of Service)

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-80205?
CVE-2026-80205 is a high-severity vulnerability in Nltk, classified under Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-08-26.
How severe is CVE-2026-80205?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.