Medium [CVE-2026-55520] Denial of Service via exponential backtracking in robots.txt URL wildcard matching
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-55520.
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Summary
Protego is a pure-Python robots.txt parser with support for modern conventions. Prior to 0.6.2, protego._urlpattern._URLPattern._prepare_pattern_for_regex translates every asterisk in an Allow or Disallow directive into a lazy regular-expression wildcard, so a directive containing many asterisks creates exponential backtracking.
Protego.parse processes a crafted robots.txt file, protego. Protego.can_fetch can spend an attacker-controlled period matching a near-miss URL and deny service to the crawler.
The vulnerable path is src/protego/_urlpattern.py in the _URLPattern match logic. This issue is fixed in version 0.6.2.
A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by providing a crafted robots.txt file containing numerous asterisks in Allow or Disallow directives. This causes exponential backtracking during URL wildcard matching, leading to a Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) condition.
This Moderate denial of service flaw in Protego, a robots.txt parser, does not affect Red Hat products as the vulnerable component is only shipped in Fedora. Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 6.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).
Weakness: CWE-1333.
- < 0.6.2
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 hours ago·verify at source
Mitigation checklist
- Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.
Official advisory · high-confidence parse· fetched 2 hours ago·verify at source
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