THREATPORT/VULNERABILITY/CVE-2017-9047
HIGH SEVERITY

CVE-2017-9047

Libxml2 vulnerability

CVSS
7.5
EPSS
3.2%
EPSS pct
87th
Exploited
No known
A buffer overflow was discovered in libxml2 20904-GITv2.9.4-16-g0741801. The function xmlSnprintfElementContent in valid.c is supposed to recursively dump the element content definition into a char buffer 'buf' of size 'size'. The variable len is assigned strlen(buf). If the content->type is XML_ELEMENT_CONTENT_ELEMENT, then (i) the content->prefix is appended to buf (if it actually fits) whereupon (ii) content->name is written to the buffer. However, the check for whether the content->name actually fits also uses 'len' rather than the updated buffer length strlen(buf). This allows us to write about "size" many bytes beyond the allocated memory. This vulnerability causes programs that use libxml2, such as PHP, to crash.
Affected vendor
Xmlsoft
Affected product
Libxml2
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness type (CWE)
  • CWE-119 — Improper Restriction of Operations within Memory Bounds
Published
2017-05-18

Risk analysis

Based on its CVSS vector, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network, low attack complexity, requiring no privileges, no user interaction. Successful exploitation leads to high impact to availability.

Its EPSS score of 3.2% reflects a lower probability of exploitation activity in the wild over the next 30 days, placing it above 87% of all scored CVEs.

Check your external exposure to CVE-2017-9047

  • Confirm whether Xmlsoft Libxml2 is running on any internet-facing host or subdomain.
  • Match discovered service fingerprints against the version affected by CVE-2017-9047.
  • Prioritise remediation if the asset is public, business-critical, or near authentication/payment flows.

How ThreatPort helps with CVE-2017-9047

ThreatPort's external attack surface scanner checks your internet-facing assets — agentlessly, from the outside in — for the exposed services and versions that CVE-2017-9047 affects, then prioritises the finding by real risk using CISA KEV and FIRST.org EPSS.

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