Expat 2.2 (Expat bug #537)

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The canonical database for vulnerabilities affecting Python is available on GitHub in the Open Source Vulnerability (OSV) format. This database can be viewed online at the Open Source Vulnerability Database.

The Expat XML parser mishandles certain kinds of malformed input documents, resulting in buffer overflows during processing and error reporting. The overflows can manifest as a segmentation fault or as memory corruption during a parse operation. The bugs allow for a denial of service attack in many applications by an unauthenticated attacker, and could conceivably result in remote code execution.

Dates:

  • Disclosure date: 2017-02-17 (Python issue bpo-29591 reported)
  • Reported by: 2016-05-27 (expat bug #537 reported)

Fixed In

Python issue

expat 2.2.0: Various security vulnerabilities in bundled expat (CVE-2016-0718 and CVE-2016-4472).

  • Python issue: bpo-29591
  • Creation date: 2017-02-17
  • Reporter: Natanael Copa

CVE-2016-0718

Expat allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via a malformed input document, which triggers a buffer overflow.

CVE-2016-4472

The overflow protection in Expat is removed by compilers with certain optimization settings, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via crafted XML data. NOTE: this vulnerability exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2015-1283 and CVE-2015-2716.

Timeline

Timeline using the disclosure date 2017-02-17 as reference: