CVE-2022-34749 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.6) CWE-1333 vulnerability in mistune. A fix is available for mistune — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Mistune vulnerable to catastrophic backtracking
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-34749 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
mistuneReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
In mistune through 2.0.2, support of inline markup is implemented by using regular expressions that can involve a high amount of backtracking on certain edge cases. This behavior is commonly named catastrophic backtracking.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | mistune | ≥ 2.0.0a1&&< 2.0.3 | 2.0.3pip install --upgrade 'mistune==2.0.3' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for mistune, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update mistune to 2.0.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-34749 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2022-34749 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2022-34749. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 7.1 | ceph-2:18.2.1-381.el8cp | RHSA-2026:2769 |
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 8.1 | ceph-2:19.2.1-331.el9cp | RHSA-2026:2711 |
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 8 | rhceph/rhceph-8-rhel9:1770630907 | RHSA-2026:2737 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-34749 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2022-34749 across PyPI dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.