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.
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History
Wed, 06 May 2026 19:30:00 +0000
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ssvc
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Wed, 06 May 2026 18:00:00 +0000
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| Description | 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. | |
| Title | Mistune ReDoS in LINK_TITLE_RE allows denial of service with crafted Markdown titles | |
| Weaknesses | CWE-1333 | |
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cvssV4_0
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: GitHub_M
Published:
Updated: 2026-05-06T19:02:51.759Z
Reserved: 2026-03-17T19:27:06.345Z
Link: CVE-2026-33079
Updated: 2026-05-06T19:02:48.489Z
Status : Received
Published: 2026-05-06T18:16:03.097
Modified: 2026-05-06T20:16:31.370
Link: CVE-2026-33079
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
Updated: 2026-05-06T20:45:05Z