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7.3

mdex Escaped-Tag Rendering Causes Memory Crash

published 4 months ago
Summary

A security issue in mdex and mdex_native can cause a program to run out of memory and crash when rendering documents from user-supplied content. This can happen when an attacker sends a malicious document that contains many escaped tags. Affected applications should update to a secure version of mdex or mdex_native to prevent this issue.

What to do
  • Update leandrocp mdex to version 0.12.3.
  • Update leandrocp mdex_native to version 0.2.3.
Affected software
Ecosystem VendorProductAffected versions
Hex leandrocp mdex >= 0.11.0, < 0.12.3
Fix: upgrade to 0.12.3
Hex leandrocp mdex_native >= 0.1.0, < 0.2.3
Fix: upgrade to 0.2.3
Original advisory text
Unbounded native memory leak in mdex escaped-tag rendering enables unauthenticated denial of service
## Summary

Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime vulnerability in leandrocp mdex and mdex\_native allows an attacker who controls a rendered document to cause a denial of service through unbounded native memory exhaustion.

The native rendering code permanently leaks memory when rendering a document that contains escaped-tag nodes. The conversion of each %MDEx.EscapedTag{} node into its native representation (From<ExEscapedTag> for NodeValue in the Rust NIF) calls Box::leak on the caller-supplied literal string, which surrenders the backing allocation so that it lives for the entire lifetime of the operating system process and is never freed.

Both the byte length of each literal and the number of escaped-tag nodes in a document are attacker-controlled, and there is no size cap, rate limit, or string interning on this path. Every render of a document containing escaped-tag nodes therefore leaks literal\_size x node\_count bytes that can never be reclaimed, and repeated renders accumulate without bound. Rendering reaches this path through the public MDEx.to\_html/1 entry point and any other API that renders a supplied %MDEx.Document{}.

Any application that uses mdex (or mdex\_native directly) to render documents derived from user-supplied content is affected. Because the leaked memory is never reclaimed for the life of the BEAM process, an attacker can drive resident memory upward without limit until the node exhausts memory and crashes, taking down every process on it.

The vulnerable native code originally shipped inside mdex (in native/comrak\_nif/src/types/document.rs) and was later extracted into the separate mdex\_native package (native/mdex\_native\_nif/src/types/document.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.
Fix within
Internet-facing 60 days
Internal At next upgrade
  • Not known to be exploited
  • Needs hands-on effort to exploit (estimated)
  • Gives an attacker partial control (estimated)
Severity
7.3 High
Type
CWE-401Memory Leak
Timeline
Published29 Jun 2026
Updated29 Jun 2026
First seen29 Jun 2026
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