Vulnerability · Published Aug 21, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-53530ratex-parser panics on `\verb` with a multibyte delimiter (UTF-8 byte-boundary slice)
High 8.7
In plain English
A high-severity uncontrolled resource consumption in RaTeX from erweixin. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.4% (higher than 37% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
RaTeX is a KaTeX-compatible math rendering engine written in Rust. Prior to version 0.1.11, the public parser entrypoint `ratex_parser::parse(&str)` panics on the 9-byte input `\verbéxé` (i.e. `\verb` followed by the non-ASCII delimiter `é`). When handling a `\verb` command, the parser slices the verbatim argument with byte indices (`arg[1..arg.len() - 1]`); if the delimiter character is multibyte UTF-8, index `1` lands inside that character and Rust panics with *“byte index 1 is not a char boundary”*. Because RaTeX’s release profile sets `panic = "abort"` (`Cargo.toml:48`), the panic aborts the entire process — not just the current request/thread — making this a hard denial of service for any service that renders untrusted LaTeX. Version 0.1.11 fixes the issue.
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-248, CWE-400, CWE-1285 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
References
- https://github.com/erweixin/RaTeX/security/advisories/GHSA-4hgp-59h5-gvrj x_refsource_CONFIRM