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Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 : 0321: expat (ALINUX3-SA-2026:0321)

🗓️ 29 Oct 2026 00:00:00Reported by TenableType 
nessus
 nessus
🔗 www.tenable.com👁 1 Views

Remote unauthenticated DoS and XML injection in Expat on Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.

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Refs
Code
#%NASL_MIN_LEVEL 80900
##
# (C) Tenable, Inc.
#
# The package checks in this plugin were extracted from
# Alibaba Cloud Linux Security Advisory ALINUX3-SA-2026:0321.
##

include('compat.inc');

if (description)
{
  script_id(373498);
  script_version("1.1");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_modification_date", value:"2026/10/29");

  script_cve_id("CVE-2026-66046", "CVE-2026-93990");

  script_name(english:"Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 : 0321: expat (ALINUX3-SA-2026:0321)");

  script_set_attribute(attribute:"synopsis", value:
"The remote Alibaba Cloud Linux host is missing one or more security updates.");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"description", value:
"The remote Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced
in the ALINUX3-SA-2026:0321 advisory.

    Package updates are available for Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 that fix the following vulnerabilities:

    CVE-2026-66046:
    Expat through 2.8.3 contains a denial of service vulnerability caused by quadratic algorithmic complexity
    in the storeAtts() function in xmlparse.c, where processing N specified attributes with non-normalized
    values triggers an O(N^2) linear scan of elementType->defaultAtts to determine CDATA status. A remote
    unauthenticated attacker can supply a single well-formed XML document of a few megabytes to an application
    parsing untrusted XML to cause excessive CPU consumption, resulting in denial of service without requiring
    authentication, external entity resolution, or non-default parser options.

    CVE-2026-93990:
    Expat through 2.8.4 fails to validate low surrogates following high surrogates in UTF-16 input, allowing
    malformed UTF-16 sequences to be accepted. Attackers can craft UTF-16 encoded XML with lone high
    surrogates that consume following code units, hiding markup characters from the parser and enabling XML
    injection attacks.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Alibaba Cloud Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version
number.");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"see_also", value:"http://mirrors.aliyun.com/alinux/3/cve/alinux3-sa-20260321.xml");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"solution", value:
"Update the affected expat and / or expat-devel packages.");
  script_set_cvss_base_vector("CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:C/A:N");
  script_set_cvss_temporal_vector("CVSS2#E:POC/RL:OF/RC:C");
  script_set_cvss3_base_vector("CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N");
  script_set_cvss3_temporal_vector("CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"cvss4_vector", value:"CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"cvss4_threat_vector", value:"CVSS:4.0/E:P");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"cvss_score_source", value:"CVE-2026-93990");

  script_set_attribute(attribute:"exploitability_ease", value:"Exploits are available");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"exploit_available", value:"true");

  script_set_attribute(attribute:"vuln_publication_date", value:"2026/08/18");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"patch_publication_date", value:"2026/10/28");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_publication_date", value:"2026/10/29");

  script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_type", value:"local");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"cpe", value:"p-cpe:/a:alibabacloud:alibaba_cloud_linux_3:expat");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"cpe", value:"p-cpe:/a:alibabacloud:alibaba_cloud_linux_3:expat-devel");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"cpe", value:"cpe:/o:alibabacloud:alibaba_cloud_linux_3");
  script_set_attribute(attribute:"generated_plugin", value:"current");
  script_end_attributes();

  script_category(ACT_GATHER_INFO);
  script_family(english:"Alibaba Cloud Linux Local Security Checks");

  script_copyright(english:"This script is Copyright (C) 2026 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.");

  script_dependencies("ssh_get_info2.nasl");
  script_require_keys("Host/local_checks_enabled", "Host/Alibaba/release", "Host/Alibaba/rpm-list", "Host/cpu");

  exit(0);
}


include('rpm2.inc');

if (!get_kb_item('Host/local_checks_enabled')) audit(AUDIT_LOCAL_CHECKS_NOT_ENABLED);
var os_product = get_kb_item('installed_os/local/SSH/0/product');
if (isnull(os_product) || 'Alibaba Cloud Linux' >!< os_product) audit(AUDIT_OS_NOT, 'Alibaba Cloud Linux');
var os_version = get_kb_item('installed_os/local/SSH/0/version');
if (isnull(os_version)) audit(AUDIT_UNKNOWN_APP_VER, 'Alibaba Cloud Linux');
if (! preg(pattern:"^3([^0-9]|$)", string:os_version)) audit(AUDIT_OS_NOT, 'Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.x', 'Alibaba Cloud Linux ' + os_version);

if (!get_kb_item('Host/Alibaba/rpm-list')) audit(AUDIT_PACKAGE_LIST_MISSING);

var cpu = get_kb_item('Host/cpu');
if (isnull(cpu)) audit(AUDIT_UNKNOWN_ARCH);
if ('aarch64' >!< cpu && 'x86_64' >!< cpu) audit(AUDIT_LOCAL_CHECKS_NOT_IMPLEMENTED, 'Alibaba Cloud Linux', cpu);

var constraints = [
  {
    'release': '3',
    'pkgs': [
      {'reference':'expat-2.5.0-4.al8', 'cpu':'aarch64', 'rpm_spec_vers_cmp':TRUE, 'epoch':'0'},
      {'reference':'expat-2.5.0-4.al8', 'cpu':'x86_64', 'rpm_spec_vers_cmp':TRUE, 'epoch':'0'},
      {'reference':'expat-devel-2.5.0-4.al8', 'cpu':'aarch64', 'rpm_spec_vers_cmp':TRUE, 'epoch':'0'},
      {'reference':'expat-devel-2.5.0-4.al8', 'cpu':'x86_64', 'rpm_spec_vers_cmp':TRUE, 'epoch':'0'}
    ]
  }
];

var os_release = get_one_kb_item('installed_os/local/SSH/0/release');
var os_sp = get_one_kb_item('Host/*/minor_release');

var flag = 0;
var reference;
var sp;
var _cpu;
var el_string;
var rpm_spec_vers_cmp;
var epoch;
var allowmaj;
var exists_check;
var cves;
foreach var constraint ( constraints ) {
  # Check that the target release is equal to the affected release
  if (!empty_or_null(constraint['release'])){
    if (constraint['release'] != os_release) continue;
  }
  if (!empty_or_null(constraint['sp'])){
    if (constraint['sp'] != os_sp) continue;
  }
  foreach var pkg ( constraint['pkgs'] ) {
    reference = NULL;
    sp = NULL;
    _cpu = NULL;
    el_string = NULL;
    rpm_spec_vers_cmp = NULL;
    epoch = NULL;
    allowmaj = NULL;
    exists_check = NULL;
    cves = NULL;
    if (!empty_or_null(pkg['reference'])) reference = pkg['reference'];
    if (!empty_or_null(pkg['sp'])) sp = pkg['sp'];
    if (!empty_or_null(pkg['cpu'])) _cpu = pkg['cpu'];
    if (!empty_or_null(pkg['el_string'])) el_string = pkg['el_string'];
    if (!empty_or_null(pkg['rpm_spec_vers_cmp'])) rpm_spec_vers_cmp = pkg['rpm_spec_vers_cmp'];
    if (!empty_or_null(pkg['epoch'])) epoch = pkg['epoch'];
    if (!empty_or_null(pkg['allowmaj'])) allowmaj = pkg['allowmaj'];
    if (!empty_or_null(pkg['exists_check'])) exists_check = pkg['exists_check'];
    if (!empty_or_null(pkg['cves'])) cves = pkg['cves'];
    if (reference &&
        ## (no known rpm to check OR known rpm_exists)
        (!exists_check || rpm_exists(rpm:exists_check)) &&
        rpm_check(sp:sp, cpu:_cpu, reference:reference, epoch:epoch, el_string:el_string, rpm_spec_vers_cmp:rpm_spec_vers_cmp, allowmaj:allowmaj, cves:cves)) flag++;
  }
}

if (flag)
{
  security_report_v4(
      port       : 0,
      severity   : SECURITY_HOLE,
      extra      : rpm_report_get()
  );
  exit(0);
}
else
{
  var tested = pkg_tests_get();
  if (tested) audit(AUDIT_PACKAGE_NOT_AFFECTED, tested);
  else audit(AUDIT_PACKAGE_NOT_INSTALLED, 'expat / expat-devel');
}

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29 Oct 2026 00:00Current
7.3High risk
Vulners AI Score7.3
CVSS 3.17.5
CVSS 48.7
EPSS0.00742
SSVC
1