Denial of service or RCE from libxml2 and libxslt

Description

Nokogiri is affected by series of vulnerabilities in libxml2 and libxslt, which are libraries Nokogiri depends on. It was discovered that libxml2 and libxslt incorrectly handled certain malformed documents, which can allow malicious users to cause issues ranging from denial of service to remote code execution attacks.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
high
Advisory on GitHub
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Repository advisory
Source code
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Published (advisory)
2018-09-17 21:53:42 UTC
Updated
2023-06-30 19:54:53 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2020-06-16 21:22:55 UTC

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
6.05% 90.55%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
7.5 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-125 Out-of-bounds Read

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
rubygems nokogiri >= 1.6.0, < 1.6.8 1.6.8

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence