Vulnerability in ratex-parser (CVE-2026-53531)
Summary
Vulnerability in ratex-parser (CVE-2026-53531). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Exploitable via SIGABRT. Mitigation: upgrade to 0.1.11 or later.
Original description
The description as published by the source.
Summary
RaTeX’s recursive-descent parser recurses one (or more) native stack frame per nesting level at {, \left, \sqrt{, ^{, etc, with no maximum depth limit. A short, ~10 KB input of nested groups overflows the 8 MB main-thread stack and aborts the process. With panic = "abort" (Cargo.toml:48), and because a Rust stack overflow is always a fatal SIGABRT regardless of panic strategy this is an unrecoverable, whole-process denial of service reachable from a single untrusted LaTeX string.
Details
The mutual recursion has no depth guard (crates/ratex-parser/src/parser.rs):
parse_expression (:113) -> parse_atom (:281/285) -> parse_group (:451)
^ |
| on '{' (:459) recurse |
+--------------------------+
\left adds another recursive edge: handle_left → parse_expression (crates/ratex-parser/src/functions/left_right.rs:47). The only counters present are unrelated to depth: leftright_depth (a \right-matching counter, parser.rs:24) and the macro expander’s max_expand = 1000 (macro_expander.rs:64), which does not gate brace / \left recursion (those tokens never pass through expand_once). There is no recursion_limit/depth parameter on parse_group, parse_expression, or parse_atom.
PoC
$ python3 -c 'import sys;sys.stdout.write("{"*200000+"x"+"}"*200000)' | ./target/release/p…
Source: GitHub Security Advisories (Global) NVD GitHub Advisory
Auto-generated summary
Assembled by SecPulse from the source data (CVSS, CWE, affected versions) using templates — no AI involved. Check the original description and references below for exact details.
A vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-53531 has been found in ratex-parser.
Attackers can target a specific entry point like SIGABRT over the network to misuse the product.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade ratex-parser to 0.1.11 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "ratex-parser CVE-2026-53531" on the vendor's site.
CVE-2026-53531 (ratex-parser) — CWE-400
Attack surface: SIGABRT / handle_left / parse_expression / leftright_depth
Patched: 0.1.11 — apply immediately
Plan: 1) Audit SBOM/dependencies, 2) Stage→prod upgrade, 3) Add WAF/proxy monitoring on affected endpoints, 4) Hunt IOCs in logs.
Refs: see the GHSA / vendor advisory / patched release linked on this page.
A vulnerability (CWE-400) exists in ratex-parser. Attackers reach the vulnerable code path via SIGABRT.
Check the vendor advisory for the affected versions of ratex-parser. Attack surface: SIGABRT / handle_left / parse_expression / leftright_depth.
Severity: ?. Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
Update to 0.1.11.
Until the patch is applied: disable the affected feature, apply WAF rules, or restrict access via network ACLs.
Search webserver/proxy logs for unusual request patterns matching this CVE's known IOCs. Run grep -r 'ratex-parser' . against your dependency files (package-lock.json, requirements.txt, go.sum) to find affected services.
Response actions
Concrete steps and command examples for SOC/SRE teams to execute in order
-
1Identify exposure identify
grep -r 'ratex-parser' . | grep -v node_modulesリポジトリと本番環境の依存ファイル (package-lock.json / requirements.txt / go.sum / Gemfile.lock 等) で
ratex-parserを grep し、稼働しているサービス・バージョンを把握する。 -
2Apply patch patch
Upgrade ratex-parser to 0.1.11ステージング環境で 0.1.11 に上げて回帰テスト → 本番反映。回帰テストはアプリの主要ハッピーパスを含めること。
-
3Post-deployment verification verify
Confirm patched version is live in productionパッチ適用後、ステージングで PoC または同等の悪用パターンを再現して脆弱性が閉じたことを確認。本番ではアクセスログ・WAF でアラート再発が無いか継続監視。
Affected packages
References
- package github.com
- web github.com
- web github.com