libxml2 vulnerability

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2014-3660  

libxml2 could be made to consume resources if it processed a specially crafted file.

It was discovered that libxml2 would incorrectly perform entity substitution even when requested not to. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a specially crafted document, an attacker could possibly cause resource consumption, resulting in a denial of service.

27 October 2014

libxml2 vulnerability

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

  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Summary

libxml2 could be made to consume resources if it processed a specially crafted file.

Software Description

  • libxml2 - GNOME XML library

Details

It was discovered that libxml2 would incorrectly perform entity substitution even when requested not to. If a user or automated system were tricked into opening a specially crafted document, an attacker could possibly cause resource consumption, resulting in a denial of service.

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
libxml2 - 2.9.1+dfsg1-3ubuntu4.4
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
libxml2 - 2.7.8.dfsg-5.1ubuntu4.11
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
libxml2 - 2.7.6.dfsg-1ubuntu1.15

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