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Fencer Vulns
medium 6.9

CVE-2026-53429 json

Unbounded native memory leak in mdex escaped-tag rendering enables unauthenticated denial of service

published 2026-06-29 4 mo ago modified 2026-10-25 14 d ago also EEF-CVE-2026-53429 , EUVD-2026-40176 , GHSA-cmvp-gp9f-23xw

cvss
6.9
version 4.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits
0
none known

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.

Patch / fix

  • hex mdex 0.12.3
  • hex mdex_native 0.2.3
  • leandrocp mdex 0.12.3
  • leandrocp mdex_native 0.2.3

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
4 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/leandrocp/mdex_native/security/advisories/GHSA-cmvp-gp9f-23xw referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 6.9 CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA 4.0 6.9 CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
hex mdex
>=0.11.0, <0.12.3
0.12.3
hex mdex_native
>=0.1.0, <0.2.3
0.2.3

Affected products

  • leandrocp mdex
  • leandrocp mdex_native

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

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.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.