CVE-2026-49851
HIGH 8.7Mistune is a Python Markdown parser with renderers and plugins. Prior to 3.3.0, Mistune is vulnerable to a CPU exhaustion DoS due to superlinear (approximately O(n²)) behavior in parse_link_text. When parsing Markdown containing many consecutive [ characters, parse_link_text repeatedly scans the input using a regex search inside a loop. Each iteration re-scans a large portion of the remaining string, resulting in quadratic-time behavior. An attacker-controlled Markdown input can therefore trigger excessive CPU usage with a very small payload. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.3.0.
Severe if exploited (CVSS 8.7), but no known exploitation and low modeled probability. Patch on a normal cadence.
Exploitation likelihood
0.4%chance of exploitation in 30 days · 27th percentile
Impact if exploited
8.7CVSS 4.0 · HIGH
- ConfidentialityNone
- IntegrityNone
- AvailabilityHigh
What an attacker needs
- ✓Access: Reachable over the network — no local access needed
- ✓Privileges: No account or privileges required
- ✓User interaction: No user interaction needed
- ✓Complexity: No special conditions — reliably repeatable
- ✓Requirements: No special attack requirements
✓ lowers the bar for an attacker · ⚠ raises it
Affected
Products Mistune Red Hat Openshift Ai (Rhoai) Migration Toolkit For Applications 8 Red Hat Openshift Container Platform 4 Red Hat Satellite 6
Weakness (CWE)
- CWE-400: Uncontrolled resource consumption
- CWE-770: Allocation without limits
- CWE-407
- CWE-1333: Inefficient regex (ReDoS)
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