league/commonmark's quadratic complexity bugs may lead to a denial of service
Impact
Several polynomial time complexity issues in league/commonmark may lead to unbounded resource exhaustion and subsequent denial of service.
Source excerpt · OSVAffected packages
Start with the recorded fix for your release branch. Check your installed version and test compatibility before upgrading. Fixing this advisory does not rule out other vulnerabilities in the release.
| Affected range | Recorded fix |
|---|---|
| Earlier releases before 2.6.0Ecosystem versions | 2.6.0 |
Version evidence: OSV · GHSA-c2pc-g5qf-rfrf
View original version evidence (131 explicit versions)
Original source description
Impact
Several polynomial time complexity issues in league/commonmark may lead to unbounded resource exhaustion and subsequent denial of service.
Malicious users could trigger that inefficient code with carefully crafted Markdown inputs that are specifically designed to ensure the worst-case performance is reached. Sending multiple such requests in parallel could tie up all available CPU resources and/or PHP-FPM processes, leading to denial of service for legitimate users.
Patches
These vulnerabilities have been patched in version 2.6.0. All users on older versions are highly encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible.
Workarounds
If you cannot upgrade, you may be able to mitigate the issues by:
- Setting very low
memory_limitandmax_execution_timePHP configurations to prevent runaway resource usage - Implementing rate-limiting, bot protection, or other approaches to reduce the risk of simultaneous bad requests hitting your site
- Limiting the size of inputs fed into this library (specifically the max length of each line)
- Limiting the use of this library to trusted users
References
Most of these issues were discovered in other Markdown parsers. You can read more about them here:
- https://github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/129
- https://github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/157
- https://github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/172
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r572-jvj2-3m8p
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-24f7-9frr-5h2r
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-29g3-96g3-jg6c
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r8vr-c48j-fcc5
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-w4qg-3vf7-m9x5
- https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-66g8-4hjf-77xh
For general information about this type of issue:
References
- Security advisory github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-24f7-9frr-5h2r
- Security advisory github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-29g3-96g3-jg6c
- Security advisory github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-66g8-4hjf-77xh
- Security advisory github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r572-jvj2-3m8p
- Security advisory github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-r8vr-c48j-fcc5
- Security advisory github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-w4qg-3vf7-m9x5
- Security advisory github.com/thephpleague/commonmark/security/advisories/GHSA-c2pc-g5qf-rfrf
- Source reference github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/129
- Source reference github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/157
- Source reference github.com/commonmark/commonmark.js/issues/172
- Source reference github.com/thephpleague/commonmark