Vulnerability identifier: #VU68829

Vulnerability 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-2022-40304

CWE-ID: CWE-399

Exploitation vector: Network

Exploit availability: No

Vulnerable software:
Libxml2
Universal components / Libraries / Libraries used by multiple products

Vendor: Gnome Development Team

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

The vulnerability exists in entities.c due to the way libxml2 handles reference cycles. The library does not anticipate that entity content can be allocated from a dict and clears it upon reference cycle detection by setting its first byte to zero. This can lead to memory corruption  issues, such as double free errors and result in a denial of service.

Mitigation
Install updates from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Libxml2: 2.0.0 - 2.10.2

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External links
http://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/commit/644a89e080bced793295f61f18aac8cfad6bece2
http://aix.software.ibm.com/aix/efixes/security/libxml2_advisory4.asc

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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.