HtmlsanitizeexApplication · Rrrene

CVE-2026-68750

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2026-08-06
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 1.5.3 or later.
See remediation →
84/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click 13 days old

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
Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in the traversal engine in rrrene html_sanitize_ex allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server CPU and memory via a flat run of sibling elements in sanitized HTML. The list clause of HtmlSanitizeEx.Traverser.traverse/2 recurses on the tail of a sibling list and then evaluates List.flatten([head] ++ tail) over the already flattened result, so every one of n siblings copies and re-walks the entire remaining tail. The flattening is only needed for the rare case where scrub returns several replacement nodes for one node, but the cost is paid across the whole tail at every step, making traversal quadratic in sibling count. The traverser sits on every public entry point, so no particular scrubber or configuration is required and the payload needs only allowed tags. A 160 KB body of 20,000 sibling elements occupies a scheduler for roughly 1.7 seconds, and the cost grows faster than the body does. This issue affects html_sanitize_ex: from 0.3.1 before 1.5.3.

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

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

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
HtmlsanitizeexApplication
Affected:>= 0.3.1, < 1.5.3

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 1.5.3 or later
Fixed in 1.5.3
Recommended fix High confidence

1.5.3

  1. Locate your project's mix.exs file
  2. Update the html_sanitize_ex dependency to version 1.5.3 by changing the version specification (e.g., "~> 1.5.3" or ">= 0.3.1 and < 1.5.3" to "~> 1.5.3")
  3. Run `mix deps.update html_sanitize_ex` to fetch the updated version, or `mix deps.get` if you are setting it for the first time
  4. Verify the correct version is installed by running `mix deps | grep html_sanitize_ex`
  5. Run your test suite to ensure the upgrade does not break existing functionality
  6. Deploy the updated application

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-2026-68750 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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