CVE-2026-54525EPSS p35.7%
CVE-2026-54525CVE-2026-54525
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.
Scoring
| CVSS | 8.8 () |
| Vector | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| EPSS | 0.43% probability of exploitation · percentile 35.7% · 2026-10-17T12:00:28Z |
| Last modified | 2026-10-16 |