CVE-2026-49851

Mistune: Potential DoS via quadratic-time parsing in parse_link_text

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: June 24, 2026 at 05:05 PM UTC
Updated: October 25, 2026 at 10:10 PM UTC
2 products affected across 2 vendorsProject MistuneOpenShift AI

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.5%
SSVC
PoC

Description

Mistune 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.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 3.3.0
Affected range stops below 3.3.0, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
All versions
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073451 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073459 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073546 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073593 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073605 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073611 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073713 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073717 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073866 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073873 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073913 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073929 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787073936 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787074078 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787074331 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787076481 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787076778 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 1787077779 (unaffected)

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

References (5)

Source: 0b0ca135-0b70-47e7-9f44-1890c2a1c46c
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-49851
Source: 0b0ca135-0b70-47e7-9f44-1890c2a1c46c
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2492304
Source: 0b0ca135-0b70-47e7-9f44-1890c2a1c46c
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:60520

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCPoCAutomatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.5HIGHredhat-SADP
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusDEFERRED
CWE
CWE-400CWE-770CWE-407CWE-1333

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