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GHSA-mh25-x5hq-wrqp: league/commonmark: Denial of service via colliding heading slugs

highCVSS 7.5
Impact UniqueSlugNormalizer::normalize() makes each slug document-unique by searching for an unused numeric suffix, but restarts that search from 1 on every collision. The k-th heading that collapses to the same base slug performs k−1 array lookups, so K colliding slugs cost Σ(k−1) = O(K²). An attacker can force every heading onto a single base slug trivially — many empty ATX headings, identical heading text, or punctuation-only headings that normalize to the empty string. The path is reached whenever the shared slug normalizer runs over attacker-controlled text. That happens when HeadingPermalinkExtension is registered (its HeadingPermalinkProcessor normalizes every heading), independently through FootnoteExtension (its AnonymousFootnoteRefParser normalizes every ^[label] reference), and on any TableOfContentsExtension site (which requires HeadingPermalinkExtension to be co-registered). The default slug_normalizer/unique setting (UniqueSlugNormalizerInterface::PER_DOCUMENT) accumulates collisions across the whole document. No authentication is required — a small document body turns into seconds of CPU and denies service. Availability impact only. UniqueSlugNormalizer was introduced in 2.0.0 (first shipped in 2.0.0-beta1, May 2021); the 1.x heading-permalink slug generator performed no de-duplication and is not affected. All 2.x releases (including 2.8.x) are affected. Workarounds Integrators who cannot upgrade immediately can: - **Set slug_normalizer/unique to false / UniqueSlugNormalizerInterface::DISABLED, which stops the de-duplication scan entirely — at the cost of losing id uniqueness (colliding headings then share an anchor). - Disable HeadingPermalinkExtension (and TableOfContentsExtension, which depends on it), and FootnoteExtension where anonymous footnotes reach the same normalizer, for untrusted Markdown. - Cap the accepted document size / heading count upstream** so K cannot reach the quadratic danger zone. Each of these trades off functionality o

Details

Source
GitHub Security Advisories (INTL · database · site)
Severity
high — CVSS 7.5
Published
2026-08-06
Last updated
2026-08-06
Exploitation
Not in CISA KEV at last sync

Original advisory: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-mh25-x5hq-wrqp

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