CVE-2003-1564

MEDIUM

libxml2 < 2.5.0 - Denial of Service via Recursive Entity Expansion

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

libxml2, possibly before 2.5.0, does not properly detect recursion during entity expansion, which allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (memory and CPU consumption) via a crafted XML document containing a large number of nested entity references, aka the "billion laughs attack."

References (6)

Core 6
Core References
Broken Link third-party-advisory x_refsource_secunia
http://secunia.com/advisories/31868
Release Notes x_refsource_misc
http://xmlsoft.org/news.html
Broken Link mailing-list x_refsource_mlist
http://www.stylusstudio.com/xmldev/200302/post20020.html
Mailing List, Patch mailing-list x_refsource_mlist
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2008-August/msg00034.html
Broken Link vendor-advisory x_refsource_redhat
http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2008-0886.html

Scores

CVSS v3 6.5
EPSS 0.0162
EPSS Percentile 72.8%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Details

CWE
CWE-776
Status published
Products (1)
xmlsoft/libxml2 < 2.5.0
Published Dec 31, 2003
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026