GHSA-r8cj-3554-33mr: Justhtml Justhtml Introduces Denial-of-service Hardening Vulnerability

{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-r8cj-3554-33mr",
  "modified" : "2026-05-08T18:19:30Z",
  "published" : "2026-05-08T18:19:30Z",
  "aliases" : [ ],
  "summary" : "justhtml introduces denial-of-service hardening",
  "details" : "## Summary\n\n`justhtml` `1.18.0` fixes multiple low-severity denial-of-service hardening issues in CSS selector handling and linkification.\n\nThese issues are availability concerns. They do not allow script execution, data disclosure, or sanitizer bypass by themselves.\n\n## Affected versions\n\n- `justhtml` `< 1.18.0`\n\n## Fixed version\n\n- `justhtml` `1.18.0` released on May 4, 2026\n\n## Impact\n\n### CSS selector handling\n\nApplications that evaluate attacker-controlled selector strings, or that run selector-based transform pipelines over attacker-controlled documents, could consume disproportionate CPU or memory.\n\nThe affected selector patterns included oversized selectors, large selector lists, oversized compound selectors, long combinator chains, deeply nested functional pseudo-classes such as `:not(...)`, repeated attribute/class token matching over large values, repeated sibling or ancestor scans, repeated positional pseudo-class work, and `:contains(...)` over large descendant text.\n\nProgrammatically constructed malformed DOM graphs could also trigger non-terminating or duplicate traversal in some selector paths, including cyclic/shared child graphs, cyclic parent chains, and cyclic text traversal for `:contains(...)`.\n\n### Linkification\n\nAttacker-controlled text containing punctuation-heavy input or URL candidates ending in long runs of unmatched closing brackets could cause repeated rescanning and consume disproportionate CPU when linkification was enabled.\n\n## Default configuration\n\nOrdinary sanitization of parsed HTML with the default `JustHTML(..., sanitize=True)` configuration is not expected to expose untrusted users to selector injection, because selectors are normally supplied by application code.\n\nThe main risk areas are:\n\n- applications that accept selector strings from untrusted users and pass them to `query(...)`, `matches(...)`, or selector-based transforms\n- custom transform or sanitization pipelines that run selector matching over very large untrusted documents\n- applications that construct or mutate DOM trees programmatically from untrusted structure\n- applications that enable `Linkify(...)` over attacker-controlled text\n\n## Fixes in 1.18.0\n\n`1.18.0` adds generalized selector resource controls and removes several repeated-work hot paths:\n\n- shared selector limits for parse and match operations\n- structural caps for selector length, selector lists, compound selectors, complex selectors, and parse depth\n- match-operation and string-byte budgets\n- per-query matcher state for caches and cycle guards\n- precomputed or cached ancestor, sibling, positional, attribute-token, text-content, `:not(...)`, `:empty`, and `:nth-child(...)` work\n- consistent enforcement across public parsing, `query(...)`, tag-only query fast paths, transform selector compilation, and sanitization transform matching\n- linkification hardening for punctuation-heavy inputs and trailing bracket trimming\n\n## CWE mapping\n\n- CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption\n- CWE-407: Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity\n- CWE-835: Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition\n\n## Recommended action\n\nUpgrade to `justhtml` `1.18.0`.\n\nIf users cannot upgrade immediately:\n\n- do not pass untrusted selector strings to `query(...)`, `matches(...)`, or selector-based transforms\n- restrict the size of untrusted documents before selector matching or linkification\n- avoid constructing programmatic DOM graphs from untrusted structure\n- avoid enabling `Linkify(...)` on very large attacker-controlled text\n\n## Credit\n\nDiscovered during an internal security review of `justhtml`.",
  "severity" : [ ],
  "affected" : [ {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "PyPI",
      "name" : "justhtml"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "1.18.0"
      } ]
    } ]
  } ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/EmilStenstrom/justhtml/security/advisories/GHSA-r8cj-3554-33mr"
  }, {
    "type" : "PACKAGE",
    "url" : "https://github.com/EmilStenstrom/justhtml"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-400", "CWE-407", "CWE-835" ],
    "severity" : "LOW",
    "github_reviewed" : true,
    "github_reviewed_at" : "2026-05-08T18:19:30Z",
    "nvd_published_at" : null
  }
}