Null pointer dereference in Libxml2 - CVE-2018-14404
Published: July 19, 2018 / Updated: April 12, 2023
Vulnerability identifier: #VU13949
CSH Severity: Low
CVSS v4.0: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P/U:Clear
CVE-ID: CVE-2018-14404
CWE-ID: CWE-476
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability:
No public exploit available
Vendor: Gnome Development Team
Affected software:
Libxml2
Libxml2
Detailed vulnerability description
The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause DoS condition on the target system.
The vulnerability exists in the xmlXPathCompOpEval() function, as defined in the path.c source code file due to improper parsing of invalid XPath expressions in the XPATH_OP_AND and XPATH_OP_OR cases. A remote attacker can send a specially crafted request that submits malicious input to an application that is using the affected library, trigger a NULL pointer dereference and cause the application to crash.
How to mitigate CVE-2018-14404
Install update from vendor's website.