Mistune ReDoS in LINK_TITLE_RE allows denial of service with crafted Markdown titles

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Summary

CVECVE-2026-33079
StatePUBLISHED
AssignerGitHub_M
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-05-06 18:16:03 UTC
Updated2026-05-07 15:43:39 UTC
DescriptionIn 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.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v4.0 8.7 HIGH from [email protected]

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/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/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

EPSS: 0.000200000 probability, percentile 0.058290000 (date 2026-05-12)

Problem Types: CWE-1333 | CWE-1333 CWE-1333: Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity

VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
4.0[email protected]Secondary8.7HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/C...
4.0CNADECLARED8.7HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

CVSS v4.0 Breakdown

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Attack Requirements
None
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Sub Conf.
None
Sub Integrity
None
Sub Availability
None

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/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/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Lepture Mistune affected >=3.0.0a1, <= 3.2.0 Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
github.com/lepture/mistune/security/advisories/GHSA-8mp2-v27r-99xp 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0 github.com
github.com/lepture/mistune/blob/df23edd60b43b639d2e6760ef9dd3d618aa11c21... [email protected] github.com
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