CVE-2026-54525

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.

CVSS 3.1

8.8CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS

0.4% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days; higher than 36% of CVEs (scores of 2026-10-25)

CWE

CWE-78

Published

2026-10-14

Modified

2026-10-16

Record from

the NVD, synced 2026-10-19

References

• https://github.com/shd101wyy/crossnote/commit/5588ca2121c3da43fe331575dc5cf4ef347b91ee
• https://github.com/shd101wyy/crossnote/pull/442
• https://github.com/shd101wyy/crossnote/releases/tag/0.9.29
• https://github.com/shd101wyy/vscode-markdown-preview-enhanced/commit/dcd80281c986293b93d9f1af34ced64dcb230c77
• https://github.com/shd101wyy/vscode-markdown-preview-enhanced/pull/2318

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