CVE-2026-105645 in Ghost
Summary
by MITRE • 10/05/2026
Ghost is a Node.js content management system. From 5.37.0 until 6.67.0, a crafted request to the external media inliner could cause excessive CPU usage, making the Ghost server unresponsive. Exploiting this requires Administrator access. This issue is fixed in version 6.67.0.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/05/2026
The vulnerability identified within the Ghost content management system represents a significant resource exhaustion flaw located specifically within the external media inlining functionality. This component, which processes and embeds remote images or assets into posts, was susceptible to crafted requests that triggered inefficient processing loops or excessive computational overhead. The issue persisted across versions starting from 5.37.0 up through version 6.67.0, indicating a systemic flaw in how the application handled certain types of external resource references during content rendering operations.
From a technical perspective, this vulnerability is classified as an Improper Input Validation leading to Denial of Service, aligning with CWE-20 and CWE-400 respectively within the Common Weakness Enumeration framework. The root cause lies in the lack of sufficient constraints or timeout mechanisms when processing external media links. When a malicious actor provides specifically crafted URLs pointing to resources that require extensive parsing or recursive resolution, the Node.js event loop becomes blocked by CPU-intensive tasks. This blocks other asynchronous operations, effectively freezing the application's ability to respond to legitimate user requests.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe for system availability and integrity. Because exploiting this flaw requires Administrator access, it represents an insider threat scenario rather than a remote unauthenticated attack vector. An authenticated administrator with malicious intent or compromised credentials could deliberately trigger these excessive CPU usage patterns by embedding specific media links into posts or pages. The resulting server unresponsiveness leads to a complete denial of service for all users attempting to interact with the Ghost instance, disrupting content publishing workflows and potentially causing data loss if unsaved work is abandoned during the outage.
This behavior maps directly to the ATT&CK technique T1496 Resource Hijacking, where an adversary uses computing resources to disrupt availability or perform other malicious activities. In this context, while not necessarily for cryptomining, the abuse of system resources serves as a denial-of-service mechanism that degrades service quality and reliability. The requirement for administrative privileges limits the blast radius but does not mitigate the severity of the impact on infrastructure stability once exploited.
Mitigation strategies primarily involve upgrading to version 6.67.0 or later, where this flaw has been patched by implementing stricter input validation and resource usage controls within the media inlining module. Organizations should also enforce strict role-based access control policies to ensure that only trusted individuals possess administrative privileges. Additionally, deploying web application firewalls with rules capable of detecting anomalous request patterns related to external resource fetching can provide an additional layer of defense against potential abuse of this functionality while patching is applied.