libxml2: Multiple vulnerabilities

Background

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

Description

Multiple vulnerabilities were reported in libxml2:

• Andreas Solberg reported that libxml2 does not properly detect recursion during entity expansion in an attribute value (CVE-2008-3281).
• A heap-based buffer overflow has been reported in the xmlParseAttValueComplex() function in parser.c (CVE-2008-3529).
• Christian Weiske reported that predefined entity definitions in entities are not properly handled (CVE-2008-4409).
• Drew Yao of Apple Product Security reported an integer overflow in the xmlBufferResize() function that can lead to an infinite loop (CVE-2008-4225).
• Drew Yao of Apple Product Security reported an integer overflow in the xmlSAX2Characters() function leading to a memory corruption (CVE-2008-4226).

Impact

A remote attacker could entice a user or automated system to open a specially crafted XML document with an application using libxml2, possibly resulting in the exeution of arbitrary code or a high CPU and memory consumption.

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/libxml2-2.7.2-r1"