CVE-2026-53429
Published:June 29, 2026
Updated:July 21, 2026
Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime vulnerability in leandrocp mdex and mdex_native allows an attacker who controls a rendered document to cause a denial of service through unbounded native memory exhaustion.
The native rendering code permanently leaks memory when rendering a document that contains escaped-tag nodes. The conversion of each %MDEx.EscapedTag{} node into its native representation (From<ExEscapedTag> for NodeValue in the Rust NIF) calls Box::leak on the caller-supplied literal string, which surrenders the backing allocation so that it lives for the entire lifetime of the operating system process and is never freed.
Both the byte length of each literal and the number of escaped-tag nodes in a document are attacker-controlled, and there is no size cap, rate limit, or string interning on this path. Every render of a document containing escaped-tag nodes therefore leaks literal_size x node_count bytes that can never be reclaimed, and repeated renders accumulate without bound. Rendering reaches this path through the public MDEx.to_html/1 entry point and any other API that renders a supplied %MDEx.Document{}.
Any application that uses mdex (or mdex_native directly) to render documents derived from user-supplied content is affected. Because the leaked memory is never reclaimed for the life of the BEAM process, an attacker can drive resident memory upward without limit until the node exhausts memory and crashes, taking down every process on it.
The vulnerable native code originally shipped inside mdex (in native/comrak_nif/src/types/document.rs) and was later extracted into the separate mdex_native package (native/mdex_native_nif/src/types/document.rs), where it remains unpatched.
This issue affects mdex from 0.11.0 before 0.12.3, and mdex_native from 0.1.0 before 0.2.3.
Affected Packages
https://github.com/leandrocp/mdex_native.git (GITHUB):
Affected version(s) >=v0.1.1 <v0.2.3Fix Suggestion:
Update to version v0.2.3mdex (HEX):
Affected version(s) >=0.11.0 <0.12.3Fix Suggestion:
Update to version 0.12.3mdex_native (HEX):
Affected version(s) >=0.1.0 <0.2.3Fix Suggestion:
Update to version 0.2.3Related Resources (6)
Do you need more information?
Contact UsCVSS v4
Base Score:
6.9
Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Attack Requirements
NONE
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
NONE
Vulnerable System Integrity
NONE
Vulnerable System Availability
HIGH
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
6.2
Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
NONE
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Weakness Type (CWE)
Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
EPSS
Base Score:
0.13