libxml2 vulnerabilities

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2016-4448   CVE-2016-4658   CVE-2016-5131  

Several security issues were fixed in libxml2.

It was discovered that libxml2 incorrectly handled format strings. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a specially crafted document, an attacker could possibly cause libxml2 to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2016-4448)

16 March 2017

libxml2 vulnerabilities

A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:

  • Ubuntu 16.10
  • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Summary

Several security issues were fixed in libxml2.

Software Description

  • libxml2 - GNOME XML library

Details

It was discovered that libxml2 incorrectly handled format strings. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a specially crafted document, an attacker could possibly cause libxml2 to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2016-4448)

It was discovered that libxml2 incorrectly handled certain malformed documents. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a specially crafted document, an attacker could cause libxml2 to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2016-4658)

Nick Wellnhofer discovered that libxml2 incorrectly handled certain malformed documents. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a specially crafted document, an attacker could cause libxml2 to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code. (CVE-2016-5131)

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 16.10
libxml2 - 2.9.4+dfsg1-2ubuntu0.1
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
libxml2 - 2.9.3+dfsg1-1ubuntu0.2
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
libxml2 - 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.9
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
libxml2 - 2.7.8.dfsg-5.1ubuntu4.17

To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make all the necessary changes.

References