CVE-2026-67422
As a result, a single untrusted Markdown line under 50 bytes rendered with markdown.markdown() in each extension's default configuration drives the rendering thread into unbounded CPU usage that grows exponentially with input length, enabling an…
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.65%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
pymdown-extensions is a collection of extensions for the Python Markdown library. In versions up to and including 11.0, four inline processors (caret, tilde, betterem, and magiclink) use regular expressions whose content groups can partition a run of delimiter characters in exponentially many ways, causing catastrophic backtracking. As a result, a single untrusted Markdown line under 50 bytes rendered with markdown.markdown() in each extension's default configuration drives the rendering thread into unbounded CPU usage that grows exponentially with input length, enabling an unauthenticated remote attacker who can submit Markdown to cause denial of service. The exposure is concrete for web applications that render user-supplied Markdown (comments, wikis, issue bodies, live preview), including any app using pymdownx.extra which bundles the vulnerable betterem default, as well as hosted docs/CI systems that build untrusted Markdown. The issue has been fixed in version 11.0.1.
- CVSS 3.1
- 7.5 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- EPSS
- 0.65% probability · 49th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-1333
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
References
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.