What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-104078: Obsidian Desktop < 1.14.0 RCE via MathJax Safe Filter Bypass

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-10-08 · updated 2026-10-27
• Weakness: CWE-79

Description

Obsidian Desktop before 1.14.0 contains a filter bypass vulnerability in the bundled MathJax 3.2.2 Safe component that allows attackers to execute arbitrary code by embedding a crafted \href value with a TAB byte in the URL scheme, causing filterURL to produce an empty protocol that bypasses the configured safeProtocols restrictions. Attackers can craft a note containing a malicious MathJax formula that renders as a javascript: URL anchor, which when clicked by the victim in Live Preview executes in the Node-integration-enabled vault renderer via require('child_process'), achieving arbitrary operating system command execution as the desktop user.

Affected products

• Obsidian Desktop: before 1.14.0 — fixed in 1.14.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Obsidian Desktop 1.14.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://codeant.ai/security-research/from-markdown-to-a-shell-obsidian-desktop-rce
• https://obsidian.md/changelog/2026-10-05-desktop-v1.14.4/
• https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/obsidian-desktop-rce-via-mathjax-safe-filter-bypass

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