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Fencer Intel
medium 6.5

CVE-2024-28244 json

KaTeX's maxExpand bypassed by Unicode sub/superscripts

published 2y ago modified 2mo ago also EUVD-2024-0906 , GHSA-cvr6-37gx-v8wc

cvss
6.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.2%
EPSS 2.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 82%
public exploits
0
none known

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 has been corrected in KaTeX v0.16.10.

Patch / fix

  • npm katex 0.16.10
  • katex katex 0.16.10
  • node-katex Debian 14, Debian 13 0.16.10+~cs6.1.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-28244

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2024-28244 updated cvss 6.5

katex: causes a near-infinite loop

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2y ago

Exploit prediction

2.16% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 82% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
GitHub 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm katex
>=0.15.4, <0.16.10
0.16.10

Affected products

  • KaTeX KaTeX

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-674 Uncontrolled Recursion
  • CWE-606 Unchecked Input for Loop Condition

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of KaTeX/KaTeX published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.