CVE-2026-54525 — Markdown Preview Enhanced: One Click RCE via Markdown Link Command Injection on Windows
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-con…
Published: 2026-10-14 · CVSS: 8.8 · CVSS 3.1
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.
Source: CVE Program · Revision 8b16575c39f1e1810c5e863010da073d2d3285e7