{"id":"CVE-2026-68750","url":"https://www.cyber-defence.io/tools/cve/CVE-2026-68750","generatedAt":"2026-10-28T08:28:38.197Z","title":"Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in the traversal engine in rrrene html_sanitize_ex allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server CPU and memory via a flat run of sibling elements in sanitized HTML.","description":"Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in the traversal engine in rrrene html_sanitize_ex allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server CPU and memory via a flat run of sibling elements in sanitized HTML. The list clause of HtmlSanitizeEx.Traverser.traverse/2 recurses on the tail of a sibling list and then evaluates List.flatten([head] ++ tail) over the already flattened result, so every one of n siblings copies and re-walks the entire remaining tail. The flattening is only needed for the rare case where scrub returns several replacement nodes for one node, but the cost is paid across the whole tail at every step, making traversal quadratic in sibling count.\n\nThe traverser sits on every public entry point, so no particular scrubber or configuration is required and the payload needs only allowed tags. A 160 KB body of 20,000 sibling elements occupies a scheduler for roughly 1.7 seconds, and the cost grows faster than the body does.\n\nThis issue affects html_sanitize_ex: from 0.3.1 before 1.4.5 and from 1.5.0-rc.0 before 1.5.3.","published":"2026-08-06T16:16:52.000Z","lastModified":"2026-10-24T16:10:00.000Z","status":"Modified","sourceIdentifier":"6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db","cvss":{"version":"4.0","score":8.2,"severity":"HIGH","vector":"CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/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/M"},"cwe":["CWE-407"],"affected":["rrrene/htmlsanitizeex"],"epss":{"score":0.00802,"percentile":0.56444,"date":"2026-10-27","history":[]},"kev":{"listed":false},"exploits":{"count":0,"verified":false,"firstPublished":null,"source":"Exploit-DB (https://gitlab.com/exploit-database/exploitdb)","entries":[]},"verdict":{"level":"high","text":"High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.80%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit."},"changes":[],"references":[{"url":"https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-68750.html","tags":["Patch","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db"},{"url":"https://github.com/rrrene/html_sanitize_ex/commit/507a6fb95dd4c466cac8a8355d8989043e9fbcc1","source":"6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db"},{"url":"https://github.com/rrrene/html_sanitize_ex/commit/9f5ccedbed230930813f992a1e6906fcf485981e","tags":["Patch"],"source":"6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db"},{"url":"https://github.com/rrrene/html_sanitize_ex/security/advisories/GHSA-463q-p2fr-mh9p","tags":["Broken Link"],"source":"6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db"},{"url":"https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-68750","tags":["Patch","Third Party Advisory"],"source":"6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db"}],"sources":{"nvd":"https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-68750","epss":"https://www.first.org/epss/","kev":"https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog","exploitdb":"https://www.exploit-db.com/"},"licence":"CC BY 4.0 — link back to the CVE Explorer if you publish the results; upstream data remains subject to its own terms."}