CVE-2015-8806

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 5.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-04-13 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

dict.c in libxml2 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (heap-based buffer over-read and application crash) via an unexpected character immediately after the "<!DOCTYPE html" substring in a crafted HTML document.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 12.04, 14.04, 15.10, 16.04
Debian Linux: 8.0
xmlsoft libxml2: before 2.9.4 — fixed in 2.9.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: xmlsoft libxml2 2.9.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/02/03/5
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/bulletinjul2016-3090568.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/82071
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2994-1
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=749115
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201701-37
https://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3593
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/02/03/5
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/bulletinjul2016-3090568.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/82071
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2994-1
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=749115

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