Denial of service in GNOME libxml2

1) Memory leak

EUVDB-ID: #VU24489

Risk: Medium

CVSSv3.1: 6.5 [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2019-19956

CWE-ID: CWE-401 - Missing release of memory after effective lifetime

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform DoS attack on the target system.

The vulnerability exists due memory leak in xmlParseBalancedChunkMemoryRecover in parser.c. A remote attacker can trigger a memory leak related to newDoc->oldNs and perform denial of service attack.

Mitigation

Install updates from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Libxml2: 1.7.0 - 2.9.9

External links

http://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/commit/5a02583c7e683896d84878bd90641d8d9b0d0549
http://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/12/msg00032.html
http://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20200114-0002/

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote non-authenticated attacker via the Internet.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.