CVEvulnerability

CVE-2003-1564

6.5 MEDIUM Published 2003-12-31 Modified 2026-06-16 Official page ↗
Status
Modified
Published
2003-12-31
Last modified
2026-06-16
Assigner
[email protected]
CVSS 3.1 ([email protected])
6.5 MEDIUM — CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.0 ([email protected])
9.3 HIGH — AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
Weaknesses
CWE-776

Description

libxml2, possibly before 2.5.0, does not properly detect recursion during entity expansion, which allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (memory and CPU consumption) via a crafted XML document containing a large number of nested entity references, aka the "billion laughs attack."

Affected configurations

• xmlsoft libxml2 (< 2.5.0)

Related

Weakness · CWE (1)

  • CWE-776 Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs weakness

Referenced by CWE · observed example (3)

  • CWE-405 Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification) weakness
  • CWE-409 Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification) weakness
  • CWE-776 Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs weakness

References