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Uncontrolled Recursion

CVE-2024-28244

Severity Medium
Score 6.5/10

Summary

KaTeX is a JavaScript library for TeX math rendering on the web. KaTeX users who render untrusted mathematical expressions could encounter malicious input using `\def` or `\newcommand` that causes a near-infinite loop, despite setting `maxExpand` to avoid such loops. KaTeX supports an option named `maxExpand` which aims to prevent infinitely recursive macros from consuming all available memory and/or triggering a stack overflow error. Unfortunately, support for "Unicode (sub|super)script characters" allows an attacker to bypass this limit. Each sub/superscript group instantiated a separate Parser with its own limit on macro executions, without inheriting the current count of macro executions from its parent. This issue affects the package katex versions 0.15.4 through 0.16.9.

  • LOW
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • NONE
  • HIGH

CWE-674 - Uncontrolled Recursion

The product does not properly control the amount of recursion which takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack.

Advisory Timeline

  • Published