Resource exhaustion in Gchq Cyberchef

CVE-2026-72912

CyberChef is a web app for encryption, encoding, compression, and data analysis. Prior to 11.3.0, CyberChef's pretty-recipe parser in src/core/Utils.mjs can exhaust client-side CPU when a malformed #recipe= URL fragment containing a large number of unmatched quote characters reaches Utils.parseRecipeConfig(). The function synchronously applies a complex global regular expression that may perform heavy backtracking before rejecting the input, causing the victim's browser tab to freeze during startup for seconds or longer. No code execution, data exfiltration, or privilege escalation occurs. This issue is fixed in version 11.3.0.

Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 4.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.003 (21.7th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 22nd percentile — 21.7% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-72912: held from 0.002 to 0.003.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.003 · change: +0.001

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-72912?
CVE-2026-72912 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Gchq Cyberchef, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 4.3/10. Published 2026-08-10.
How severe is CVE-2026-72912?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 4.3 out of 10.