CVE-2016-3705

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 5.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-05-17 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-20

Description

The (1) xmlParserEntityCheck and (2) xmlParseAttValueComplex functions in parser.c in libxml2 2.9.3 do not properly keep track of the recursion depth, which allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (stack consumption and application crash) via a crafted XML document containing a large number of nested entity references.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 12.04, 14.04, 15.10, 16.04
Debian Linux: 8.0
Hewlett Packard Enterprise IceWall Federation Agent: 3.0
HP Icewall File Manager: 3.0
openSUSE Leap: 42.1
xmlsoft libxml2: 2.9.3

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2016-05/msg00055.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2016-05/msg00127.html
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2957.html
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/May/10
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/bulletinjul2016-3090568.html
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/linuxbulletinjul2016-3090544.html
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/ovmbulletinjul2016-3090546.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/89854
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2994-1
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016:1292
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765207
https://h20566.www2.hpe.com/portal/site/hpsc/public/kb/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-c05157239

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