Vulnerability Note VU#493966

Overview

Libxml is the XML parser for Gnome, a desktop suite and development platform for Linux systems. Libxml2, the latest version of the library as of this writing, has a buffer overflow vulnerability which may allow execution of arbitrary code.

Description

Gnome, a desktop suite and development platform for Linux systems, uses Libxml as an XML parser to handle encoding and decoding or URI strings (this is part of the GNOME XML Toolkit). The Libxml2 release of Libxml prior to version 2.6.6 (published Feb 12 2004) contains a buffer overflow vulnerability when parsing URI strings in XML-structrued files. If the URI is over 4096 bytes, it may be possible to crash software using a vulnerable version of Libxml2.

Impact

The complete impact of this vulnerability is not yet known. It is reported to cause a SEGV in software using a vulnerable version of Libxml2.

Solution

Update to Libxml2 version 2.6.6 or later at http://www.xmlsoft.org/downloads.html

Systems Affected (Learn More)

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
Debian	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004
Fedora Project	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004
Gentoo Linux	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004
GNOME Project	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004
Linux Netwosix	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004
MandrakeSoft	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004
OpenPKG	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004
Red Hat Inc.	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004
SGI	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004
Trustix Secure Linux	Affected	-	09 Mar 2004

If you are a vendor and your product is affected, let us know.

CVSS Metrics (Learn More)

Group	Score	Vector
Base	N/A	N/A
Temporal	N/A	N/A
Environmental	N/A	N/A

References

• http://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2004-February/msg00070.html
• http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/projects/libxml
• http://www.xmlsoft.org/news.html
• http://www.xmlsoft.org/downloads.html
• http://secunia.com/advisories/10958/
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/9718
• http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/15301
• http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/15302
• http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/o-086.shtml
• http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2004-0110

Credit

Thanks to Yuuichi Teranishi for finding this vulnerability.

This document was written by Jeffrey S. Havrilla.

Other Information

• CVE IDs: CAN-2004-0110
• Date Public: 12 Feb 2004
• Date First Published: 09 Mar 2004
• Date Last Updated: 09 Mar 2004
• Document Revision: 7