CVE-2026-53428

MEDIUM

Unbounded memory allocation in highlight_lines range expansion in mdex

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

Description

Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value vulnerability in leandrocp mdex allows an unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service through unbounded memory allocation. comrak_nif::lumis_adapter::LumisAdapter::parse_highlight_lines in native/comrak_nif/src/lumis_adapter.rs eagerly expands a user-controlled inclusive line range from a fenced code block's highlight_lines decorator into a Vec<usize>, pushing one element per integer in the range with no upper bound on the range size. An attacker who can supply Markdown that an application renders with MDEx.to_html/2 (for example a comment, chat message, or wiki page) can embed a code block whose info string is rust highlight_lines="1-100000000", forcing the native adapter to allocate roughly 8 bytes per line in the range. A payload that differs by only a few bytes can therefore allocate hundreds of megabytes, and a sufficiently large range (for example 1-2000000000) exhausts host memory and aborts the BEAM, denying service to every user of the rendering process. The per-line write loop additionally tests membership with a linear scan over the same vector, degrading rendering to a quadratic cost even for ranges that do not immediately exhaust memory. The vulnerable native code originally shipped inside mdex (in native/comrak_nif/src/lumis_adapter.rs) and was later extracted into the separate mdex_native package (native/mdex_native_nif/src/lumis_adapter.rs), where it remains unpatched. This issue affects mdex from 0.11.0 before 0.12.3, and mdex_native from 0.1.0 before 0.2.3.

Scores

CVSS v4 6.9
EPSS 0.0014
EPSS Percentile 4.0%
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable no
Technical Impact partial

Details

CWE
CWE-789
Status published
Products (4)
leandrocp/mdex 0.11.0 - 0.12.3
leandrocp/mdex a8407611715d1ead35fbcba79c72cef1b7df387b - 6ed94d905f97af188323f042698ae841c02293b4
leandrocp/mdex_native 0.1.0 - 0.2.3
leandrocp/mdex_native 956528c5e31746253347029e810a969ab916fd27 - 798a363b4339f6f7162ec8437c4c9f9b5ae6fbf3
Published Jun 29, 2026
Tracked Since Jun 30, 2026