CVE-2026-77214

libexpat Heap Buffer Over-read in xmlparse.c via XML_ParseBuffer

State
Published
Severity
8.3 High
Published
Oct 7, 2026
Updated
Oct 27, 2026
Reserved
Aug 20, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

libexpat before commit 13c5f63 contains a heap buffer over-read vulnerability in xmlparse.c. XML_ParseBuffer advances the parse buffer end with parser->m_bufferEnd += len using a caller-supplied length that is not validated against the allocated buffer size, so repeated XML_ParseBuffer calls move m_bufferEnd past the end of the heap allocation and subsequent parsing reads out of bounds. Reaching this path requires a parse buffer to already be present; otherwise XML_ParseBuffer returns XML_ERROR_NO_BUFFER. A buffer is present after a prior call to XML_GetBuffer, either directly (the common case) or indirectly through a prior XML_Parse call that allocates the buffer internally. The over-read discloses adjacent heap memory to the calling application, recovering heap pointers, libc function pointers, and code pointers sufficient to defeat ASLR and build further exploitation primitives.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
4.08.3 HighCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:NVulnCheck
3.18.2 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:LVulnCheck

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
libexpatlibexpat
  • 2.8.5 and earlierAffected
  • 13c5f63a7f1c52c2feee3b16a1134d4fb68e9ea0Not affected

References

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