VYPR
Moderate severityNVD Advisory· Published Mar 25, 2024· Updated Aug 2, 2024

KaTeX's maxExpand bypassed by Unicode sub/superscripts

CVE-2024-28244

Description

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 has been corrected in KaTeX v0.16.10.

AI Insight

LLM-synthesized narrative grounded in this CVE's description and references.

Affected packages

Versions sourced from the GitHub Security Advisory.

PackageAffected versionsPatched versions
katexnpm
>= 0.15.4, < 0.16.100.16.10

Affected products

2

Patches

Vulnerability mechanics

References

4

News mentions

0

No linked articles in our index yet.