Description
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 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.
Severity (CVSS)
| Base score | 8.2 |
|---|---|
| Severity | High |
| Version | CVSS 4.0 |
| Vector | 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 |
| Provided by | CNA |
Weaknesses
- CWE-1333 — CWE-1333 Inefficient Regular Expression Complexity
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| rrrene | html_sanitize_ex | 0.3.1 to <1.5.3 |
| rrrene | html_sanitize_ex | 21f90012eb21aa36f4e3701b7547e12faf0f3c8b to <4f4bd9eb254881462c0461fbab74b29188c2c133 |
References
- https://github.com/rrrene/html_sanitize_ex/security/advisories/GHSA-4cx2-987x-rr2x (vendor-advisory related)
- https://cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-68749.html (related)
- https://osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-68749 (related)
- https://github.com/rrrene/html_sanitize_ex/commit/4f4bd9eb254881462c0461fbab74b29188c2c133 (patch)
Generated from the official CVE List on 07 Aug 2026 07:02 UTC.