CVE-2026-11979 PUBLISHED

Stack-Based Buffer Overflow in libxml2

Assigner: CERT-PL
Reserved: 11.06.2026 Published: 29.06.2026 Updated: 29.06.2026

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.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N
CVSS Score: 1.8

Product Status

Vendor xmlsoft
Product libxml2
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0 to 2.15.3 (incl.)

Credits

  • Michał Majchrowicz (AFINE Team) finder
  • Marcin Wyczechowski (AFINE Team) finder

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-121: Stack-based Buffer Overflow CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-253 Remote Code Inclusion