7.5highHigh

CVE-2026-33079

In versions 3.0.0a1 through 3.2.0 of Mistune, there is a ReDoS (Regular Expression Denial of Service) vulnerability in `LINK_TITLE_RE` that allows an attacker who can supply Markdown for parsing to cause denial of service. The regular expression used for parsing link titles contains overlapping alternatives that can trigger catastrophic backtracking. In both the double-quoted and single-quoted branches, a backslash followed by punctuation can be matched either as an escaped punctuation sequence or as two ordinary characters, creating an ambiguous pattern inside a repeated group. If an attacker supplies Markdown containing repeated ! sequences with no closing quote, the regex engine explores an exponential number of backtracking paths. This is reachable through normal Markdown parsing of inline links and block link reference definitions. A small crafted input can therefore cause significant CPU consumption and make applications using Mistune unresponsive.

What the metrics mean

  • It is reachable over a network, without needing local access.
  • For an attacker who can reach it, no special conditions are needed to exploit it.
  • To exploit it, no account is needed.
  • Beyond that, no action by a user is required.

Scoring

CVSS
7.5 (v3.1)
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4
8.7
Weakness
CWE-1333
Assigned by
security-advisories@github.com

Dates

Published
2026-05-06
Last modified
2026-08-28
Sources
NVD

References