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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2023-39615

Severity Medium
Score 6.5/10

Summary

** DISPUTED ** Xmlsoft Libxml2 v2.11.0 was discovered to contain an out-of-bounds read via the xmlSAX2StartElement() function at /libxml2/SAX2.c. This vulnerability allows attackers to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) via supplying a crafted XML file. NOTE: the vendor's position is that the product does not support the legacy SAX1 interface with custom callbacks; there is a crash even without crafted input.

  • LOW
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • REQUIRED
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • HIGH

CWE-119 - Buffer Overflow

Buffer overflow attacks involve data transit and operations exceeding the restricted memory buffer, thereby corrupting or overwriting data in adjacent memory locations. Such overflow allows the attacker to run arbitrary code or manipulate the existing code to cause privilege escalation, data breach, denial of service, system crash and even complete system compromise. Given that languages such as C and C++ lack default safeguards against overwriting or accessing data in their memory, applications utilizing these languages are most susceptible to buffer overflows attacks.

Advisory Timeline

  • Published