Security Information / 2016 / Security Information -- DSA-3610-1 xerces-c

Debian Security Advisory

DSA-3610-1 xerces-c -- security update

Date Reported:

29 Jun 2016

Affected Packages:

xerces-c

Vulnerable:

Yes

Security database references:

In the Debian bugtracking system: Bug 828990.
In Mitre's CVE dictionary: CVE-2016-4463.

More information:

Brandon Perry discovered that xerces-c, a validating XML parser library for C++, fails to successfully parse a DTD that is deeply nested, causing a stack overflow. A remote unauthenticated attacker can take advantage of this flaw to cause a denial of service against applications using the xerces-c library.

Additionally this update includes an enhancement to enable applications to fully disable DTD processing through the use of an environment variable (XERCES_DISABLE_DTD).

For the stable distribution (jessie), this problem has been fixed in version 3.1.1-5.1+deb8u3.

We recommend that you upgrade your xerces-c packages.