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Vulnerability details: VCID-tt1e-rhy4-vyf7
Vulnerability ID VCID-tt1e-rhy4-vyf7
Aliases CVE-2023-26485
Summary 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)
Status Published
Exploitability 0.5
Weighted Severity 6.8
Risk 3.4
Affected and Fixed Packages Package Details
Weaknesses (3)
No exploits are available.
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Found at https://access.redhat.com/hydra/rest/securitydata/cve/CVE-2023-26485.json
Attack Vector (AV) Attack Complexity (AC) Privileges Required (PR) User Interaction (UI) Scope (S) Confidentiality Impact (C) Integrity Impact (I) Availability Impact (A)

network

adjacent_network

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physical

low

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none

low

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unchanged

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high

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Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L Found at https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/commit/07a66c9bc341f902878e37d7da8647d6ef150987
Attack Vector (AV) Attack Complexity (AC) Privileges Required (PR) User Interaction (UI) Scope (S) Confidentiality Impact (C) Integrity Impact (I) Availability Impact (A)

network

adjacent_network

local

physical

low

high

none

low

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none

required

unchanged

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none

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Vector: SSVCv2/E:P/A:Y/T:P/P:M/B:A/M:M/D:T/2025-02-11T17:20:05Z/ Found at https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/commit/07a66c9bc341f902878e37d7da8647d6ef150987
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L Found at https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r8vr-c48j-fcc5
Attack Vector (AV) Attack Complexity (AC) Privileges Required (PR) User Interaction (UI) Scope (S) Confidentiality Impact (C) Integrity Impact (I) Availability Impact (A)

network

adjacent_network

local

physical

low

high

none

low

high

none

required

unchanged

changed

high

low

none

high

low

none

high

low

none


Vector: SSVCv2/E:P/A:Y/T:P/P:M/B:A/M:M/D:T/2025-02-11T17:20:05Z/ Found at https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r8vr-c48j-fcc5
Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)
Percentile 0.3596
EPSS Score 0.00154
Published At June 11, 2026, 12:55 p.m.
Date Actor Action Source VulnerableCode Version
2026-06-11T17:23:02.358862+00:00 Vulnrichment Import https://github.com/cisagov/vulnrichment/blob/develop/2023/26xxx/CVE-2023-26485.json 38.6.0