GHSA-8RJF-8HW9-J63G
Vulnerability from github – Published: 2026-08-06 18:30 – Updated: 2026-08-06 18:30Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity vulnerability in the CSS scrubber in rrrene html_sanitize_ex allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server CPU via a long CSS declaration in sanitized HTML. The declaration regex in HtmlSanitizeEx.Scrubber.CSS.scrub/1 matches the property name with an unbounded greedy [-\w]+ followed by a mandatory :, so a long run of word characters not followed by a colon makes the engine give back one character at a time and retry the colon at every start offset. The work is quadratic in the length of the run, and no length cap is applied to the CSS handed to the scrubber. An 80 KB body costs roughly 2.4 seconds of scheduler time, so a few concurrent requests saturate the BEAM scheduler pool and make the application unresponsive.
The impact is CPU exhaustion only. Nothing is read, modified or disclosed.
This issue affects html_sanitize_ex: from 0.3.1 before 1.5.3.
{
"affected": [],
"aliases": [
"CVE-2026-68749"
],
"database_specific": {
"cwe_ids": [
"CWE-1333"
],
"github_reviewed": false,
"github_reviewed_at": null,
"nvd_published_at": "2026-08-06T16:16:51Z",
"severity": "HIGH"
},
"details": "Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity vulnerability in the CSS scrubber in rrrene html_sanitize_ex allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server CPU via a long CSS declaration in sanitized HTML. The declaration regex in HtmlSanitizeEx.Scrubber.CSS.scrub/1 matches the property name with an unbounded greedy [-\\w]+ followed by a mandatory :, so a long run of word characters not followed by a colon makes the engine give back one character at a time and retry the colon at every start offset. The work is quadratic in the length of the run, and no length cap is applied to the CSS handed to the scrubber. An 80 KB \u003cstyle\u003e body costs roughly 2.4 seconds of scheduler time, so a few concurrent requests saturate the BEAM scheduler pool and make the application unresponsive.\n\nThe impact is CPU exhaustion only. Nothing is read, modified or disclosed.\n\nThis issue affects html_sanitize_ex: from 0.3.1 before 1.5.3.",
"id": "GHSA-8rjf-8hw9-j63g",
"modified": "2026-08-06T18:30:50Z",
"published": "2026-08-06T18:30:50Z",
"references": [
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://github.com/rrrene/html_sanitize_ex/security/advisories/GHSA-4cx2-987x-rr2x"
},
{
"type": "ADVISORY",
"url": "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-68749"
},
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://github.com/rrrene/html_sanitize_ex/commit/4f4bd9eb254881462c0461fbab74b29188c2c133"
},
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-68749.html"
},
{
"type": "WEB",
"url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-68749"
}
],
"schema_version": "1.4.0",
"severity": [
{
"score": "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/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",
"type": "CVSS_V4"
}
]
}
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.