CVE-2026-48988CWE-400

markdown-it: Quadratic complexity DoS in smartquotes rule via replaceAt string operations

Medium · published June 17, 2026

CVSS v3.1
5.3
EPSS
0%
Percentile
36.4
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

markdown-it is a Markdown parser. Versions 14.1.1 and below contain a denial-of-service vulnerability when typographer: true is enabled, due to quadratic (O(n^2)) processing in the smartquotes rule. The issue stems from repeatedly modifying strings with replaceAt(), which performs O(n) slicing and concatenation per quote character. This can cause excessive CPU consumption when parsing quote-heavy, user-supplied markdown and may let attackers degrade or disrupt service availability. Although typographer is disabled by default, many production apps enable it for smart typography, making the issue relevant. This issue has been fixed in version 14.2.0.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.3 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00432 · 36.4th percentile
Weakness
CWE-400 · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
Published
2026-06-17T20:54Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 17 JUN 20:54Z
    markdown-it: Quadratic complexity DoS in smartquotes rule via replaceAt string operations
    cvelistv5