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HIGH

libxml2: Buffer overflow in function xmlSnprintfElementContent

Published May 18, 2017

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.

Affected products

Remediation

Red Hat statement

This vulnerability exists in the DTD validation functionality of libxml2. Applications that do not attempt to validate untrusted documents are not impacted.

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References (10)

Change history (0)

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Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner mitre
Published May 18, 2017
Updated Aug 5, 2024
Reserved May 18, 2017
NVD
Status Modified
Modified Jun 17, 2026
Red Hat
Severity Moderate
Public date May 15, 2017