CVE-2026-49851
Severity CVSS v4.0:
HIGH
Type:
CWE-400
Uncontrolled Resource Consumption ('Resource Exhaustion')
Publication date:
24/06/2026
Last modified:
15/07/2026
Description
Mistune is a Python Markdown parser with renderers and plugins. Prior to 3.3.0, Mistune is vulnerable to a CPU exhaustion DoS due to superlinear (approximately O(n²)) behavior in parse_link_text. When parsing Markdown containing many consecutive [ characters, parse_link_text repeatedly scans the input using a regex search inside a loop. Each iteration re-scans a large portion of the remaining string, resulting in quadratic-time behavior. An attacker-controlled Markdown input can therefore trigger excessive CPU usage with a very small payload. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.3.0.
Impact
Base Score 4.0
8.70
Severity 4.0
HIGH
Base Score 3.x
7.50
Severity 3.x
HIGH
References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools
- https://github.com/lepture/mistune/security/advisories/GHSA-qcq2-496w-v96p
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-49851
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2492304
- https://github.com/lepture/mistune/security/advisories/GHSA-qcq2-496w-v96p
- https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-49851.json



