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Medium · 5.3 CVE-2026-48988 EUVD-2026-37799GHSA-6v5v-wf23-fmfq

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

Published Jun 17, 2026 · Updated Jun 18, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
markdown-it markdown-it < 14.2.0 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 node-markdown-it 22.2.3+dfsg+~12.2.3-5 —
Debian 13 node-markdown-it No fix yet —
Debian 12 node-markdown-it No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 node-markdown-it No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS node-markdown-it No fix yet —
Ubuntu 25.10 node-markdown-it No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS node-markdown-it No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS node-markdown-it No fix yet —

Wolfi

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Wolfi rolling renovate 43.249.5-r1 —
Wolfi rolling vitess-24 24.0.1-r4 —
Wolfi rolling vitess-24-compat 24.0.3-r7 —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
npm markdown-it < 14.2.0 14.2.0 GHSA-6v5v-wf23-fmfq

References