diff --git a/plugins/String/config.py b/plugins/String/config.py
index e4f1840ad..3992d9631 100644
--- a/plugins/String/config.py
+++ b/plugins/String/config.py
@@ -50,5 +50,12 @@ conf.registerGlobalValue(String.levenshtein, 'max',
     and more time.  Using nested commands, strings can get quite large, hence
     this variable, to limit the size of arguments passed to the levenshtein
     command."""))
+conf.registerGroup(String, 're')
+conf.registerGlobalValue(String.re, 'timeout',
+    registry.PositiveFloat(5, """Determines the maximum time, in seconds, that
+    a regular expression is given to execute before being terminated. Since
+    there is a possibility that user input for the re command can cause it to
+    eat up large amounts of ram or cpu time, it's a good idea to keep this
+    low. Most normal regexps should not take very long at all."""))
 
 # vim:set shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 expandtab textwidth=79:
diff --git a/plugins/String/plugin.py b/plugins/String/plugin.py
index 9b4719489..ef0e2cfac 100644
--- a/plugins/String/plugin.py
+++ b/plugins/String/plugin.py
@@ -141,7 +141,8 @@ class String(callbacks.Plugin):
             s = 'You probably don\'t want to match the empty string.'
             irc.error(s)
         else:
-            v = commands.process(f, text, timeout=10, pn=self.name(), cn='re')
+            t = self.registryValue('re.timeout')
+            v = commands.process(f, text, timeout=t, pn=self.name(), cn='re')
             irc.reply(v)
     re = thread(wrap(re, [first('regexpMatcher', 'regexpReplacer'),
                    'text']))