CVE-2026-86142
Received Received - Intake

Heap-based Buffer Overflow in libxml2

Publication date: 2026-09-05

Last updated on: 2026-09-05

Assigner: MITRE

Description
In libxml2 before 2.15.4, there is a heap-based buffer overflow in xmlXPtrEvalXPtrPart because of xmlXPtrEval xpointer length saturation.

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Meta Information

Published
2026-09-05
Last Modified
2026-09-05
Generated
2026-09-05
AI Q&A
2026-09-05
EPSS Evaluated
N/A
NVD
CVE-2026-86142
EUVD
EUVD-2026-71835

Affected Vendors & Products

Showing 1 associated CPE
Vendor Product Version / Range
gnome libxml2 to 2.15.4 (exc)

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Exploitability

CWE
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KEV
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CWE ID Description
CWE-122 A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc().

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Executive Summary

This vulnerability is a heap-based buffer overflow in the libxml2 library before version 2.15.4. It occurs in the xmlXPtrEvalXPtrPart function due to incorrect handling of string length calculations in xmlXPtrEval. When the length calculation saturates, it can lead to memory corruption or crashes.

Detection Guidance

To detect this vulnerability, check the version of libxml2 installed on your system. Compare it against version 2.15.4 or later. Use commands like 'xml2-config --version' or 'dpkg -l libxml2' on Debian-based systems to verify the installed version.

Impact Analysis

An attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service, execute arbitrary code, or access sensitive data. Since libxml2 is widely used for XML parsing, applications relying on it may be vulnerable to crashes or memory corruption.

Mitigation Strategies

Immediately update libxml2 to version 2.15.4 or later. If updating is not possible, consider disabling or restricting applications that use libxml2 to process untrusted XML input until the update is applied.

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