Vulnerabilities
Misconfiguration
Compliance
CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2008-3281

Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs ('XML Entity Expansion')

Published: Aug 27, 2008 | Modified: Apr 09, 2025
CVSS 3.x
6.5
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.x
4.3 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
MEDIUM
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Additional information
NVDhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2008-3281
CWEhttps://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/776.html

libxml2 2.6.32 and earlier does not properly detect recursion during entity expansion in an attribute value, which allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (memory and CPU consumption) via a crafted XML document.

Weakness

The product uses XML documents and allows their structure to be defined with a Document Type Definition (DTD), but it does not properly control the number of recursive definitions of entities.

Affected Software

NameVendorStart VersionEnd Version
Libxml2Xmlsoft*2.6.32 (including)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1RedHatlibxml2-0:2.4.19-9.ent*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3RedHatlibxml2-0:2.5.10-11*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4RedHatlibxml2-0:2.6.16-12.3*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5RedHatlibxml2-0:2.6.26-2.1.2.4*
Libxml2Ubuntudapper*
Libxml2Ubuntufeisty*
Libxml2Ubuntugutsy*
Libxml2Ubuntuhardy*
Libxml2Ubuntuupstream*

Potential Mitigations

References

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