CVE-2016-5300

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 6.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-06-16 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-399

Description

The XML parser in Expat does not use sufficient entropy for hash initialization, which allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via crafted identifiers in an XML document. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2012-0876.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 12.04, 14.04, 15.10, 16.04
Debian Linux: 8.0
Android: 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, 6.0.1
libexpat project libexpat: before 2.2.0 — fixed in 2.2.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: libexpat project libexpat 2.2.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3597
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/06/04/4
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/06/04/5
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/security-advisory/cpujul2018-4258247.html
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/bulletinjul2016-3090568.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/91159
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-3010-1
https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=SB10365
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r58af02e294bd07f487e2c64ffc0a29b837db5600e33b6e698b9d696b%40%3Cissues.bookkeeper.apache.org%3E
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/rf4c02775860db415b4955778a131c2795223f61cb8c6a450893651e4%40%3Cissues.bookkeeper.apache.org%3E
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201701-21
https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-11-01.html

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