Description
Uncontrolled recursion in XPath evaluation in libxml2 up to and including version 2.9.14 allows a local attacker to cause a stack overflow via crafted expressions. XPath processing functions `xmlXPathRunEval`, `xmlXPathCtxtCompile`, and `xmlXPathEvalExpr` were resetting recursion depth to zero before making potentially recursive calls. When such functions were called recursively this could allow for uncontrolled recursion and lead to a stack overflow. These functions now preserve recursion depth across recursive calls, allowing recursion depth to be controlled.
CVSS Metrics
- Vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Attack Vector
- local
- Complexity
- low
- Privileges
- none
- User Action
- none
- Scope
- unchanged
- Confidentiality
- none
- Integrity
- none
- Availability
- high
- Weaknesses
- CWE-674
Metadata
- Primary Vendor
- XMLSOFT
- Published
- 9/10/2025
- Last Modified
- 11/3/2025
- Source
- NIST NVD
- Note: Verify all details with official vendor sources before applying patches.
Affected Products
xmlsoft : libxml2
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