CVE-2026-111758: high-severity vulnerability in markdown-it
markdown-it: Quadratic-time rendering of a single multi-line link reference definition with default options (regression since 14.0)
Published · Updated
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21Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 7.5epss 0.5%
markdown-it is a Markdown parser. From versions 14.1.0 to before 14.3.3, and 15.0.0 to before 15.0.3, a link reference definition whose label or title is never closed is O(n²) with default options. Continuation lines are pulled lazily with str += lineContent in src/rules_block/reference.ts, and the subsequent charCodeAt and slice calls flatten the V8 cons-string, copying everything collected so far; this runs before the rule decides the definition is invalid. No options are required to trigger it. This issue has been patched in versions 14.3.3 and 15.0.3.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Affected products
markdown-it · markdown-itRelated CVEs — markdown-it
In the same product, most dangerous first.
CVE-2022-21670MEDIUMUncontrolled Resource Consumption in markdown-itEPSS 2.4%CVE-2026-111759HIGHmarkdown-it: Quadratic complexity in smartquotes with unmatched closing quotesEPSS 0.6%CVE-2026-111766LOWmarkdown-it: Quadratic-time denial of service in inline HTML parsing with html enabledEPSS 0.4%CVE-2026-48988MEDIUMmarkdown-it: Quadratic complexity DoS in smartquotes rule via replaceAt string operationsEPSS 0.4%CVE-2025-7969MEDIUMMarkdown-it 14.1.0 - Cross-site scripting (XSS)EPSS 0.3%
References
https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it/commit/48fbc465812c440020c663f040ab22deaf8f1ecahttps://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it/commit/d99f48839d37af6fd8a2617516c43dab90755503https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it/releases/tag/14.3.3https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it/releases/tag/15.0.3https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it/security/advisories/GHSA-gfr2-rv44-r23c