CVE-2026-86434

Summary

league/commonmark versions >= 2.0.0 and < 2.8.4 (patched in 2.9.0) contain a denial of service vulnerability in UniqueSlugNormalizer::normalize(), which restarts its numeric-suffix search from 1 on every slug collision, resulting in O(K^2) time complexity for K headings that collapse to the same base slug. The vulnerable path is reached when HeadingPermalinkExtension, FootnoteExtension, or TableOfContentsExtension is registered. An unauthenticated attacker can force many headings onto a single base slug (e.g., via empty ATX headings, identical heading text, or punctuation-only headings) in a small Markdown document, consuming excessive CPU and denying service.

Affected Software

Weaknesses

• CWE-407: Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

References

• https://github.com/thephpleague/commonmark/security/advisories/GHSA-mh25-x5hq-wrqp
• https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/commonmark-2.0.0-through-2.8.3-denial-of-service-via-slug-collision

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