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Medium · 6.9 CVE-2026-53428 EEF-CVE-2026-53428EUVD-2026-40175GHSA-j93q-9cvj-rxfm

Unbounded memory allocation in highlight_lines range expansion in mdex

Published Jun 29, 2026 · Updated Jun 30, 2026 · Assigned by EEF

Description

Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value vulnerability in leandrocp mdex allows an unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service through unbounded memory allocation.

comrak_nif::lumis_adapter::LumisAdapter::parse_highlight_lines in native/comrak_nif/src/lumis_adapter.rs eagerly expands a user-controlled inclusive line range from a fenced code block's highlight_lines decorator into a Vec<usize>, pushing one element per integer in the range with no upper bound on the range size. An attacker who can supply Markdown that an application renders with MDEx.to_html/2 (for example a comment, chat message, or wiki page) can embed a code block whose info string is rust highlight_lines="1-100000000", forcing the native adapter to allocate roughly 8 bytes per line in the range.

A payload that differs by only a few bytes can therefore allocate hundreds of megabytes, and a sufficiently large range (for example 1-2000000000) exhausts host memory and aborts the BEAM, denying service to every user of the rendering process. The per-line write loop additionally tests membership with a linear scan over the same vector, degrading rendering to a quadratic cost even for ranges that do not immediately exhaust memory.

The vulnerable native code originally shipped inside mdex (in native/comrak_nif/src/lumis_adapter.rs) and was later extracted into the separate mdex_native package (native/mdex_native_nif/src/lumis_adapter.rs), where it remains unpatched.

This issue affects mdex from 0.11.0 before 0.12.3, and mdex_native from 0.1.0 before 0.2.3.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
leandrocp mdex 0.11.0 – < 0.12.3 0.12.3
leandrocp mdex_native 0.1.0 – < 0.2.3 0.2.3

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Hex mdex >= 0.11.0, < 0.12.3 0.12.3 EEF-CVE-2026-53428
Hex mdex_native >= 0.1.0, < 0.2.3 0.2.3 EEF-CVE-2026-53428

References