Skip to content
Patch Next
Sign inAdd to your agent

← Actionable
High, CVSS 7.1

Protego has exponential backtracking ReDoS in robots.txt URL wildcard matching

CVE-2026-55520GHSA-wjmf-p669-5m5p

What to do

Vendor fix available. Upgrade each affected package to the fixed version on its release line (protego 0.6.2), redeploy, then verify what is actually installed.

This page has no inventory attached, so it cannot say whether you are affected. A vendor fix is not proof that your deployment is fixed.

Add to your agent

Affected packages

  • PyPI protego

    Affected
    <= 0.6.1
    Fixed in
    0.6.2

Sources

Severity and exploitation
Exploitation
No confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next marks exploitation only from CISA KEV.
CVSS 4.0
7.1 · 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 · score source
EPSS
  • CVE-2026-55520: 0.51% estimated exploitation activity in the next 30 days; percentile 43.62 (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-03). This is a model estimate, not proof of exploitation or customer exposure.
Source description

As published by the source; long descriptions are shortened.

Problem description Protego constructs regular expressions to match URLs against robots.txt Allow: and Disallow: directives, see protego.urlpattern.URLPattern.preparepatternforregex(). Every in the directive value is translated into a lazy .? regex piece, thus a specially crafted directive value with many asterisks may produce a regex that freezes the parser due to exponential backtracking. Impact Parsing a specially crafted robots.txt with protego.Protego.parse() and then trying to match an URL with protego.Protego.canfetch() results in the latter call not returning for a period dependent on the length of the URL. Proof of concept

Dates and revisions
Published by the source
Last modified by the source
Source last checked
  1. Revision 1 · created ·

    Published from ghsa record GHSA-wjmf-p669-5m5p

Agent brief

Preview the exact text before you copy it. Commands are read-only suggestions; review them before running anything.

# Patch Next advisory brief: CVE-2026-55520

Advisory: Protego has exponential backtracking ReDoS in robots.txt URL wildcard matching
IDs: CVE-2026-55520, GHSA-wjmf-p669-5m5p
Record: https://patchnext.com/advisories/cve-2026-55520 (revision 1, source checked 26 Oct 2026, 13:50 UTC)
Inventory: none attached. This brief comes from a public page and does not say whether any deployment is affected.
Severity: High (CVSS 7.1)
Exploitation: no confirmed exploitation recorded. Patch Next confirms exploitation only from CISA KEV.
Vendor response: Vendor fix available; fixed versions by package: protego 0.6.2. A vendor fix does not mean a deployment is fixed.

## Affected components
- PyPI protego: affected <= 0.6.1; fixed in 0.6.2

## Suggested inspection (read-only)
- `python -m pip show protego`: prints the installed version. Run with the environment that serves production active.

## Supported action
Upgrade each affected component to a fixed version on its release line. For a transitive dependency, upgrade the parent package or add an override or constraint, then regenerate the lockfile. Redeploy every environment that ran an affected version.

## Required regression checks
- Run the test suite and a production build.
- Exercise the features that depend on protego.
- Repeat the inspection and confirm that only fixed versions remain installed.

## Rollback considerations
- Keep the previous lockfile and deployment artifact. Rolling back reinstates the vulnerable version, so apply any documented mitigation while you fix forward.

## Unresolved questions
- Which deployments run an affected version?
- Exploitation status can change. Check again before lowering the priority.
- Mark the work resolved only after the fixed version is verified in production.

## Sources
- Verified: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-wjmf-p669-5m5p (GitHub-reviewed advisory GHSA-wjmf-p669-5m5p lists affected ranges: PyPI protego >=0 <=0.6.1)

Commands are suggestions: review each one before running it.

Loading voting…