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.
CVSS Details
- CVSS 4.0 Base Score: 7.1 (HIGH)
- CVSS 4.0 Vector: (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/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X)
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