league/commonmark's quadratic complexity bugs may lead to a denial of service
Key facts
- Attack vector
- —
- Privileges required
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- User interaction
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- Attack complexity
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- Impact type
- Denial of service
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
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- Fix status
- Fixed
No CVSS vector from any source. Fix status from GitHub. Impact type from CWE-407.
Summary
### Impact Several polynomial time complexity issues in league/commonmark may lead to unbounded resource exhaustion and subsequent denial of service. Malicious users could trigger that inefficient code with carefully crafted Markdown inputs that are specifically designed to ensure the worst-case performance is reached. Sending multiple such requests in parallel could tie up all available CPU resources and/or PHP-FPM processes, leading to denial of service for legitimate users. ### Patches These vulnerabilities have been patched in version 2.6.0. All users on older versions are highly encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible. ### Workarounds If you cannot upgrade, you may be able to mitigate the issues by: - Setting very low `memory_limit` and `max_execution_time` PHP configurations to prevent runaway resource usage - Implementing rate-limiting, bot protection, or other approaches to reduce the risk of simultaneous bad requests hitting your site - Limiting the size of inputs fed into this library (specifically the max length of each line) - Limiting the use of this library to trusted users ### References Most of these issues were discovered in other Markdown parsers. You can read more about them here: * https://github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/129 * https://github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/157 * https://github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/172 * https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r572-jvj2-3m8p * https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-24f7-9frr-5h2r * https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-29g3-96g3-jg6c * https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r8vr-c48j-fcc5 * https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-w4qg-3vf7-m9x5 * https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-66g8-4hjf-77xh For general information about this type of issue: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_complexity * https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/407.html
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | league/commonmark (Packagist) | before 2.6.0 | 2.6.0 | Patch available | GHSA-c2pc-g5qf-rfrf |
- league/commonmark (Packagist) Vendor— Affected before 2.6.0 Fixed in 2.6.0 Patch available GHSA-c2pc-g5qf-rfrf
Remediation
- Fix · GHSA-c2pc-g5qf-rfrf league/commonmark (Packagist) Fixed in 2.6.0 Advisory →
Timeline
- 2026-10-03 Threatist record created from GHSA-c2pc-g5qf-rfrf
References
Other 11
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-24f7-9frr-5h2r
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-29g3-96g3-jg6c
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-66g8-4hjf-77xh
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r572-jvj2-3m8p
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r8vr-c48j-fcc5
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-w4qg-3vf7-m9x5
- https://github.com/thephpleague/commonmark/security/advisories/GHSA-c2pc-g5qf-rfrf
- https://github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/129
- https://github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/157
- https://github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/172
- https://github.com/thephpleague/commonmark
Sources
This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Sources and licences