CVE-2023-22484: Inefficient Quadratic complexity bug in handle_pointy_brace may lead to a denial of service

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2023-01-23 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

cmark-gfm is GitHub's fork of cmark, a CommonMark parsing and rendering library and program in C. Versions prior to 0.29.0.gfm.7 are subject to a polynomial time complexity issue in cmark-gfm that may lead to unbounded resource exhaustion and subsequent denial of service. This vulnerability has been patched in 0.29.0.gfm.7.

Affected products

github cmark-gfm: before 0.29.0.gfm.7 — fixed in 0.29.0.gfm.7

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: github cmark-gfm 0.29.0.gfm.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-24f7-9frr-5h2r
https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm/security/advisories/GHSA-24f7-9frr-5h2r

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