UBUNTU-CVE-2026-55520 (CVE-2026-55520)
Vulnerability from osv_ubuntu – Published: 2026-08-28 20:18 – Updated: 2026-09-02 16:20 – Source websiteProtego 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. After protego.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.
{
"affected": [
{
"ecosystem_specific": {
"binaries": [
{
"binary_name": "python3-protego",
"binary_version": "0.1.16+dfsg-1"
}
]
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:20.04:LTS",
"name": "python-protego",
"purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/python-protego@0.1.16+dfsg-1?arch=source\u0026distro=focal"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
],
"versions": [
"0.1.16+dfsg-1"
]
},
{
"ecosystem_specific": {
"binaries": [
{
"binary_name": "python3-protego",
"binary_version": "0.2.1+dfsg-1"
}
]
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:22.04:LTS",
"name": "python-protego",
"purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/python-protego@0.2.1+dfsg-1?arch=source\u0026distro=jammy"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
],
"versions": [
"0.1.16+dfsg-2",
"0.1.16+dfsg-3",
"0.2.1+dfsg-1"
]
},
{
"ecosystem_specific": {
"binaries": [
{
"binary_name": "python3-protego",
"binary_version": "0.3.0+dfsg-1"
}
]
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:24.04:LTS",
"name": "python-protego",
"purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/python-protego@0.3.0+dfsg-1?arch=source\u0026distro=noble"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
],
"versions": [
"0.2.1+dfsg-1",
"0.3.0+dfsg-1"
]
},
{
"ecosystem_specific": {
"binaries": [
{
"binary_name": "python3-protego",
"binary_version": "0.4.0+dfsg-1"
}
]
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:25.10",
"name": "python-protego",
"purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/python-protego@0.4.0+dfsg-1?arch=source\u0026distro=questing"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
],
"versions": [
"0.4.0+dfsg-1"
]
},
{
"ecosystem_specific": {
"binaries": [
{
"binary_name": "python3-protego",
"binary_version": "0.6.0+dfsg-1"
}
]
},
"package": {
"ecosystem": "Ubuntu:26.04:LTS",
"name": "python-protego",
"purl": "pkg:deb/ubuntu/python-protego@0.6.0+dfsg-1?arch=source\u0026distro=resolute"
},
"ranges": [
{
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
}
],
"type": "ECOSYSTEM"
}
],
"versions": [
"0.4.0+dfsg-1",
"0.5.0+dfsg-1",
"0.6.0+dfsg-1"
]
}
],
"aliases": [],
"details": "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. After protego.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.",
"id": "UBUNTU-CVE-2026-55520",
"modified": "2026-09-02T16:20:01Z",
"published": "2026-08-28T20:18:00Z",
"references": [
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-55520"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-55520"
},
{
"type": "REPORT",
"url": "https://github.com/scrapy/protego/security/advisories/GHSA-wjmf-p669-5m5p"
}
],
"related": [],
"schema_version": "1.7.0",
"severity": [
{
"score": "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N",
"type": "CVSS_V4"
},
{
"score": "medium",
"type": "Ubuntu"
}
],
"upstream": [
"CVE-2026-55520"
]
}
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