Cmark GfmApplication · GitHub

CVE-2023-24824

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-03-31
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 0.29.0.gfm.10. or later.
See remediation →
84/100
Remediation priority · High
Public exploit Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
cmark-gfm is GitHub's fork of cmark, a CommonMark parsing and rendering library and program in C. A polynomial time complexity issue in cmark-gfm may lead to unbounded resource exhaustion and subsequent denial of service. This CVE covers quadratic complexity issues when parsing text which leads with either large numbers of `>` or `-` characters. This issue has been addressed in version 0.29.0.gfm.10. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade should validate that their input comes from trusted sources.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-400

A single request can consume unbounded CPU, memory, or connections, so a modest amount of malicious traffic exhausts the service. The result is denial of service for everyone else. Remediation is enforcing limits, quotas, and timeouts on what any one request can use.

General guidance for the uncontrolled resource consumption class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Cmark GfmApplication
Affected:< 0.29.0.gfm.10.

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 0.29.0.gfm.10. or later
Fixed in 0.29.0.gfm.10.
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

0.29.0.gfm.10

  1. 1. Identify the current version of cmark-gfm in use by running `cmark-gfm --version` or checking your dependency manifest
  2. 2. Download cmark-gfm version 0.29.0.gfm.10 from the official GitHub repository at https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/releases/tag/0.29.0.gfm.10
  3. 3. Extract the source code from the downloaded archive
  4. 4. Follow the build instructions in the README: typically run `./configure`, then `make`, then `make install`
  5. 5. Verify the installation was successful by running `cmark-gfm --version` and confirming it shows 0.29.0.gfm.10
  6. 6. Rebuild any applications or libraries that link against cmark-gfm to ensure they use the new version
  7. 7. Test that your CommonMark rendering functionality works correctly with the upgraded library

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can perform the upgrade in your staging environment and verify nothing breaks — typical engagement from $1,950. Get the upgrade done

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2023-24824 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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