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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.3

CVE-2023-28631 json

Attacker controlled data in AST nodes is not validated in comrak

published 2023-03-28 3 y ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also GHSA-5r3x-p7xx-x6q5 , EUVD-2023-0886

cvss
5.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.3%
EPSS 1.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 69%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

comrak is a CommonMark + GFM compatible Markdown parser and renderer written in rust. A Comrak AST can be constructed manually by a program instead of parsing a Markdown document with `parse_document`. This AST can then be converted to HTML via `html::format_document_with_plugins`. However, the HTML formatting code assumes that the AST is well-formed. For example, many AST notes contain `[u8]` fields which the formatting code assumes is valid UTF-8 data. Several bugs can be triggered if this is not the case. Version 0.17.0 contains adjustments to the AST, storing strings instead of unvalidated byte arrays. Users are advised to upgrade. Users unable to upgrade may manually validate UTF-8 correctness of all data when assigning to `&[u8]` and `Vec<u8>` fields in the AST. This issue is also tracked as `GHSL-2023-049`.

Patch / fix

  • crates.io comrak 0.17.0
  • comrak_project comrak 0.17.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-28631 updated cvss 5.3

rust-comrak: attacker controlled data in AST nodes is not validated

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
20 mo ago

Exploit prediction

1.27% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 69% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
NVD 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
GitHub 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
crates.io comrak
<0.17.0
0.17.0

Affected products

  • kivikakk comrak

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-755 Improper Handling of Exceptional Conditions

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.