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.
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Affected Vendors & Products
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Solution
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Workaround
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References
History
Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:15:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | |
| Title | Markdown Preview Enhanced: One Click RCE via Markdown Link Command Injection on Windows | |
| Weaknesses | CWE-78 | |
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| Metrics |
cvssV3_1
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Projects
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: GitHub_M
Published:
Updated: 2026-10-14T19:06:59.440Z
Reserved: 2026-06-15T18:40:01.651Z
Link: CVE-2026-54525
No data.
Status : Received
Published: 2026-10-14T19:17:17.480
Modified: 2026-10-14T19:17:17.480
Link: CVE-2026-54525
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
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Weaknesses