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Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2026-54525 json

Markdown Preview Enhanced: One Click RCE via Markdown Link Command Injection on Windows

published 4mo ago modified 26d ago also EUVD-2026-101581 , GHSA-7v6f-3vq6-r373

Unreviewed: the maintainers' own advisory

Published by the maintainers on their GitHub repository shd101wyy/vscode-markdown-preview-enhanced. GitHub has not reviewed it into the GitHub Advisory Database, so the affected packages and versions are the maintainers' word. Read the full advisory on GitHub.

cvss
8.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 37%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Markdown Preview Enhanced is a Markdown preview extension for Visual Studio Code. Prior to 0.8.28, Markdown Preview Enhanced preview-link handling passes a decoded, Markdown-controlled link target to a Windows file-opening helper that invokes child_process.exec with the start command. When a Windows user opens an untrusted Markdown file and clicks a crafted external or unsupported-scheme link, shell metacharacters in the decoded target are interpreted by cmd.exe as command separators, allowing an attacker-selected command to run with the privileges of the current VS Code user. The attack requires one normal preview-link click but does not require malicious workspace configuration, script execution to be enabled, or additional files. This issue is fixed in version 0.8.28.

Patch / fix

  • markdown_preview_enhanced_project markdown_preview_enhanced 0.8.28

Is CVE-2026-54525 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
27d ago

Exploit prediction

0.43% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 37% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • shd101wyy vscode-markdown-preview-enhanced

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command

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 shd101wyy/vscode-markdown-preview-enhanced published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.