CVE-2023-26485

Quadratic complexity may lead to a denial of service in cmark-gfm

Published Mar 31, 2023 CVSS 3.1 · 5.3 Medium EPSS 1.0% KEV · Not listed
Description
cmark-gfm is GitHub's fork of cmark, a CommonMark parsing and rendering library and program in C. A polynomial time complexity issue in cmark-gfm may lead to unbounded resource exhaustion and subsequent denial of service. This CVE covers quadratic complexity issues when parsing text which leads with either large numbers of `_` characters. This issue has been addressed in version 0.29.0.gfm.10. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should validate that their input comes from trusted sources.




### Impact

A polynomial time complexity issue in cmark-gfm may lead to unbounded resource exhaustion and subsequent denial of service.

### Proof of concept

```
$ ~/cmark-gfm$ python3 -c 'pad = "_" * 100000; print(pad + "." + pad, end="")' | time ./build/src/cmark-gfm --to plaintext
```

Increasing the number 10000 in the above commands causes the running time to increase quadratically.

### Patches

This vulnerability have been patched in 0.29.0.gfm.10.

### Note on cmark and cmark-gfm

XXX: TBD

[cmark-gfm](https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm) is a fork of [cmark](https://github.com/commonmark/cmark) that adds the GitHub Flavored Markdown extensions. The two codebases have diverged over time, but share a common core. These bugs affect both `cmark` and `cmark-gfm`.

### Credit

We would like to thank @gravypod for reporting this vulnerability.

### References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_complexity

### For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

* Open an issue in [github/cmark-gfm](https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm)

Analysis

No analysis available yet

Remediation

No remediation available yet

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
EUVD EUVD EUVD-2023-30291 cmark-gfm is GitHub's fork of cmark, a CommonMark parsing and rendering library and program in C. A polynomial time complexity issue in cmark-gfm may lead to unbounded resource exhaustion and subsequent denial of service. This CVE covers quadratic complexity issues when parsing text which leads with either large numbers of `_` characters. This issue has been addressed in version 0.29.0.gfm.10. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should validate that their input comes from trusted sources. ### Impact A polynomial time complexity issue in cmark-gfm may lead to unbounded resource exhaustion and subsequent denial of service. ### Proof of concept ``` $ ~/cmark-gfm$ python3 -c 'pad = "_" * 100000; print(pad + "." + pad, end="")' | time ./build/src/cmark-gfm --to plaintext ``` Increasing the number 10000 in the above commands causes the running time to increase quadratically. ### Patches This vulnerability have been patched in 0.29.0.gfm.10. ### Note on cmark and cmark-gfm XXX: TBD [cmark-gfm](https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm) is a fork of [cmark](https://github.com/commonmark/cmark) that adds the GitHub Flavored Markdown extensions. The two codebases have diverged over time, but share a common core. These bugs affect both `cmark` and `cmark-gfm`. ### Credit We would like to thank @gravypod for reporting this vulnerability. ### References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_complexity ### For more information If you have any questions or comments about this advisory: * Open an issue in [github/cmark-gfm](https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm)
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-7319-1 cmark-gfm vulnerabilities
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'yes', 'Exploitation': 'poc', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Weaknesses
  • CWE-400

    Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

  • CWE-407

    Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
GitHub_M
Published
Updated
Feb 11, 2025, 5:20 PM
Reserved
Feb 23, 2023, 11:22 PM
Status
Modified
Published
Mar 31, 2023, 11:15 PM
Modified
Jun 17, 2026, 5:43 AM
Severity
Moderate
Public date
Apr 1, 2023, 12:00 AM