libxml2: Denial of service

Background

libxml2 is the XML (eXtended Markup Language) C parser and toolkit initially developed for the Gnome project.

Description

Brad Fitzpatrick reported that the xmlCurrentChar() function does not properly handle some UTF-8 multibyte encodings.

Impact

A remote attacker could entice a user to open a specially crafted XML document with an application using libxml2, possibly resulting in a high CPU consumption. Note that this vulnerability could also be triggered without user interaction by an automated system processing XML content.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All libxml2 users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-libs/libxml2-2.6.30-r1"