How severe is CVE-2023-28626?

CVE-2023-28626 has a CVSS score of 5.3/10, rated MEDIUM. Review your exposure and patch according to your risk tolerance.

Which packages are affected by CVE-2023-28626?

CVE-2023-28626 affects the following packages: comrak (crates.io). Ecosystems affected: crates.io.

How do I fix CVE-2023-28626?

Update comrak to 0.17.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-28626 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect CVE-2023-28626 in my crates.io dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for comrak, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

How do I mitigate CVE-2023-28626 if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.

Is CVE-2023-28626 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for CVE-2023-28626 yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

What is the EPSS score for CVE-2023-28626?

CVE-2023-28626 has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 1.1%, placing it in the 66th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

What type of vulnerability is CVE-2023-28626?

CVE-2023-28626 is classified as Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400). This weakness type describe the underlying flaw category, which helps determine the potential impact and the right class of mitigation.

When was CVE-2023-28626 published, and has it been updated?

CVE-2023-28626 was published on March 28, 2023 and was last updated on October 28, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

🦀

🦀 crates.io

Not in CISA KEV

MEDIUM severity

CVE-2023-28626 — comrak

MEDIUMFix: kivikakk/comrak@ce795b7

CVE-2023-28626 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in comrak. A fix is available for comrak — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Quadratic runtime when parsing Markdown in comrak

Also known asGHSA-8hqf-xjwp-p67v

Published

Mar 28, 2023

Updated

Oct 28, 2026

Affected

1 pkg

Patched

1 / 1

Exploits

None indexed

Exploitation data as of Nov 8, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

No confirmed exploitation observed yet

CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-28626.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

1.1%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk0.00%

Lower risk than most CVEs66th percentile — riskier than 66% of all scored CVEsHighest risk

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

Where this sits among everything scored

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected

🦀comrak

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

comrak is a CommonMark + GFM compatible Markdown parser and renderer written in rust. A range of quadratic parsing issues are present in Comrak. These can be used to craft denial-of-service attacks on services that use Comrak to parse Markdown. This issue has been addressed in version 0.17.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability. This issue is also tracked as GHSL-2023-047

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
🦀crates.io	`comrak`	all versions	0.17.0`cargo update -p comrak --precise 0.17.0`

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations

Application

comrakcomrak_project

< 0.17.0

range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for comrak, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update comrak to 0.17.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-28626 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Cap what an attacker can consume: apply request size, rate and timeout limits in front of the affected component, and run it with memory and CPU limits so exhaustion degrades one worker rather than the whole service.

Frequently Asked Questions

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2023-28626 in your dependencies?

Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.

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