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

August 6, 2026

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.

References

  • github.com/advisories/GHSA-mh25-x5hq-wrqp
  • github.com/thephpleague/commonmark/releases/tag/2.9.0
  • github.com/thephpleague/commonmark/security/advisories/GHSA-mh25-x5hq-wrqp

Code Behaviors & Features

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Affected versions

All versions starting from 2.0.0 before 2.9.0

Fixed versions

  • 2.9.0

Solution

Upgrade to version 2.9.0 or above.

Impact 7.5 HIGH

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

Learn more about CVSS

Weakness

  • CWE-407: Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

Source file

packagist/league/commonmark/GHSA-mh25-x5hq-wrqp.yml

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