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Vulnerability · Published Oct 14, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

CVE-2026-54525Markdown Preview Enhanced: One Click RCE via Markdown Link Command Injection on Windows

High 8.8

In plain English

A high-severity OS command injection in vscode-markdown-preview-enhanced from shd101wyy. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.4% (higher than 37% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)8.8High
Exploit odds (30 days)0.4%top 62.7% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

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.

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
shd101wyy vscode-markdown-preview-enhanced < 0.8.28

Weakness: CWE-78 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

References