CVE-2026-11979

Public on 2026-06-29
Modified on 2026-07-01
Description
libxml2 is vulnerable to multiple stack-based buffer overflows in the xmlcatalog utility when running in --shell mode. The usershell() function processes user input using fixed-size stack buffers without proper bounds checking.
By supplying an overly long input line, an attacker can overflow internal buffers (command, arg, and argv) during input parsing. This results in memory corruption within the stack frame.
Successful exploitation may cause a crash or potentially allow arbitrary code execution in the context of the xmlcatalog process.

This issue has been fixed in the commit c2e233fc.

NOTE:
The maintainers of this project did not agree that this issue is a vulnerability and considered it a bug.
Severity
Medium severity
Medium
See what this means
CVSS v3 Base Score
4.4
See breakdown

Affected Packages

Platform Package Release Date Advisory Status
Amazon Linux 2 - Core libxml2 Pending Fix
Amazon Linux 2023 libxml2 Pending Fix
Amazon Linux 2 - Core pentaho-libxml Not Affected
Amazon Linux 2 - Core perl-XML-LibXML Not Affected
Amazon Linux 2023 perl-XML-LibXML Not Affected

CVSS Scores

Score Type Score Vector
Amazon Linux CVSSv3 4.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
NVD CVSSv3 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H