Description
A buffer overflow was discovered in libxml2 20904-GITv2.9.4-16-g0741801. The function xmlSnprintfElementContent in valid.c is supposed to recursively dump the element content definition into a char buffer 'buf' of size 'size'. The variable len is assigned strlen(buf). If the content->type is XML_ELEMENT_CONTENT_ELEMENT, then (i) the content->prefix is appended to buf (if it actually fits) whereupon (ii) content->name is written to the buffer. However, the check for whether the content->name actually fits also uses 'len' rather than the updated buffer length strlen(buf). This allows us to write about "size" many bytes beyond the allocated memory. This vulnerability causes programs that use libxml2, such as PHP, to crash.
References (6)
Core 6
Core References
Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry vdb-entry
x_refsource_bid
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/98599
Third Party Advisory vendor-advisory
x_refsource_debian
http://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3952
Third Party Advisory vendor-advisory
x_refsource_gentoo
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201711-01
Exploit, Mailing List, Patch, Third Party Advisory x_refsource_misc
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2017/05/15/1
Mailing List mailing-list
x_refsource_mlist
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/rf4c02775860db415b4955778a131c2795223f61cb8c6a450893651e4%40%3Cissues.bookkeeper.apache.org%3E
Mailing List mailing-list
x_refsource_mlist
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r58af02e294bd07f487e2c64ffc0a29b837db5600e33b6e698b9d696b%40%3Cissues.bookkeeper.apache.org%3E
Scores
CVSS v3
7.5
EPSS
0.0319
EPSS Percentile
86.5%
Attack Vector
NETWORK
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Details
CWE
CWE-119
Status
published
Products (1)
xmlsoft/libxml2
2.9.4
Published
May 18, 2017
Tracked Since
Feb 18, 2026