CVE-2026-68750
Analyzed
Analyzed - Analysis Complete
Denial of Service in html_sanitize_ex via Algorithmic Complexity
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-68750, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-08-06
Last updated on: 2026-08-11
Assigner: EEF
Description
Description
Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in the traversal engine in rrrene html_sanitize_ex allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server CPU and memory via a flat run of sibling elements in sanitized HTML. The list clause of HtmlSanitizeEx.Traverser.traverse/2 recurses on the tail of a sibling list and then evaluates List.flatten([head] ++ tail) over the already flattened result, so every one of n siblings copies and re-walks the entire remaining tail. The flattening is only needed for the rare case where scrub returns several replacement nodes for one node, but the cost is paid across the whole tail at every step, making traversal quadratic in sibling count.
The traverser sits on every public entry point, so no particular scrubber or configuration is required and the payload needs only allowed tags. A 160 KB body of 20,000 sibling elements occupies a scheduler for roughly 1.7 seconds, and the cost grows faster than the body does.
This issue affects html_sanitize_ex: from 0.3.1 before 1.5.3.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| rrrene | htmlsanitizeex | From 0.3.1 (inc) to 1.5.3 (exc) |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-407 | An algorithm in a product has an inefficient worst-case computational complexity that may be detrimental to system performance and can be triggered by an attacker, typically using crafted manipulations that ensure that the worst case is being reached. |
