CVE-2026-86429 PUBLISHED

commonmark before 2.9.1 Denial of Service via SmartPunct and Attributes

Assigner: VulnCheck
Reserved: 07.09.2026 Published: 07.09.2026 Updated: 07.09.2026

The league/commonmark (thephpleague/commonmark) library in versions >= 1.5.0 and < 2.9.1 contains quadratic parsing complexity in its SmartPunctExtension and AttributesExtension. When either extension is explicitly registered on the Environment (they are not enabled by default and are excluded from the standard CommonMark and GitHub-Flavored Markdown converters), an unauthenticated attacker can submit small, specially crafted Markdown documents — such as text alternating with unpaired quotes, contiguous runs of block-level attribute blocks, or repeated class attributes — to trigger disproportionate CPU consumption and cause a denial of service. Fixed in 2.9.1.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: 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
CVSS Score: 8.7

Product Status

Vendor thephpleague
Product commonmark
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 1.5.0 to 2.9.1 (excl.)
  • Version 2.9.1 is unaffected

Credits

  • colinodell finder

References

Problem Types

  • Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity CWE