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FKIE_CVE-2026-66046

Vulnerability from fkie_nvd - Published: 2026-08-18 15:16 - Updated: 2026-08-20 16:17
Severity
7.5 (High) - CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Summary
Expat through 2.8.3 contains a denial of service vulnerability caused by quadratic algorithmic complexity in the storeAtts() function in xmlparse.c, where processing N specified attributes with non-normalized values triggers an O(N^2) linear scan of elementType->defaultAtts to determine CDATA status. A remote unauthenticated attacker can supply a single well-formed XML document of a few megabytes to an application parsing untrusted XML to cause excessive CPU consumption, resulting in denial of service without requiring authentication, external entity resolution, or non-default parser options.
References
disclosure@vulncheck.comhttps://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/pull/1321
disclosure@vulncheck.comhttps://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/expat-denial-of-service-via-storeatts-quadratic-complexity
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version
To clipboard 

{
  "affected": [
    {
      "affectedData": [
        {
          "defaultStatus": "affected",
          "packageURL": "pkg:github/libexpat/libexpat",
          "product": "libexpat",
          "repo": "https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat",
          "vendor": "libexpat project",
          "versions": [
            {
              "lessThanOrEqual": "2.8.3",
              "status": "affected",
              "version": "0",
              "versionType": "semver"
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "source": "disclosure@vulncheck.com"
    }
  ],
  "cveTags": [],
  "descriptions": [
    {
      "lang": "en",
      "value": "Expat through 2.8.3 contains a denial of service vulnerability caused by quadratic algorithmic complexity in the storeAtts() function in xmlparse.c, where processing N specified attributes with non-normalized values triggers an O(N^2) linear scan of elementType-\u003edefaultAtts to determine CDATA status. A remote unauthenticated attacker can supply a single well-formed XML document of a few megabytes to an application parsing untrusted XML to cause excessive CPU consumption, resulting in denial of service without requiring authentication, external entity resolution, or non-default parser options."
    }
  ],
  "id": "CVE-2026-66046",
  "lastModified": "2026-08-20T16:17:40.660",
  "metrics": {
    "cvssMetricV31": [
      {
        "cvssData": {
          "attackComplexity": "LOW",
          "attackVector": "NETWORK",
          "availabilityImpact": "HIGH",
          "baseScore": 7.5,
          "baseSeverity": "HIGH",
          "confidentialityImpact": "NONE",
          "integrityImpact": "NONE",
          "privilegesRequired": "NONE",
          "scope": "UNCHANGED",
          "userInteraction": "NONE",
          "vectorString": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H",
          "version": "3.1"
        },
        "exploitabilityScore": 3.9,
        "impactScore": 3.6,
        "source": "disclosure@vulncheck.com",
        "type": "Secondary"
      }
    ],
    "cvssMetricV40": [
      {
        "cvssData": {
          "Automatable": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "Recovery": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "Safety": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "attackComplexity": "LOW",
          "attackRequirements": "NONE",
          "attackVector": "NETWORK",
          "availabilityRequirement": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "baseScore": 8.7,
          "baseSeverity": "HIGH",
          "confidentialityRequirement": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "exploitMaturity": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "integrityRequirement": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedAttackComplexity": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedAttackRequirements": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedAttackVector": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedPrivilegesRequired": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedSubAvailabilityImpact": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedSubConfidentialityImpact": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedSubIntegrityImpact": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedUserInteraction": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedVulnAvailabilityImpact": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedVulnConfidentialityImpact": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "modifiedVulnIntegrityImpact": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "privilegesRequired": "NONE",
          "providerUrgency": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "subAvailabilityImpact": "NONE",
          "subConfidentialityImpact": "NONE",
          "subIntegrityImpact": "NONE",
          "userInteraction": "NONE",
          "valueDensity": "NOT_DEFINED",
          "vectorString": "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X",
          "version": "4.0",
          "vulnAvailabilityImpact": "HIGH",
          "vulnConfidentialityImpact": "NONE",
          "vulnIntegrityImpact": "NONE",
          "vulnerabilityResponseEffort": "NOT_DEFINED"
        },
        "source": "disclosure@vulncheck.com",
        "type": "Secondary"
      }
    ],
    "ssvcV203": [
      {
        "source": "134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0",
        "ssvcData": {
          "id": "CVE-2026-66046",
          "options": [
            {
              "exploitation": "none"
            },
            {
              "automatable": "yes"
            },
            {
              "technicalImpact": "partial"
            }
          ],
          "role": "CISA Coordinator",
          "timestamp": "2026-08-20T13:48:24.577412Z",
          "version": "2.0.3"
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "published": "2026-08-18T15:16:57.000",
  "references": [
    {
      "source": "disclosure@vulncheck.com",
      "url": "https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/pull/1321"
    },
    {
      "source": "disclosure@vulncheck.com",
      "url": "https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/expat-denial-of-service-via-storeatts-quadratic-complexity"
    }
  ],
  "sourceIdentifier": "disclosure@vulncheck.com",
  "vulnStatus": "Received",
  "weaknesses": [
    {
      "description": [
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "value": "CWE-407"
        }
      ],
      "source": "disclosure@vulncheck.com",
      "type": "Secondary"
    }
  ]
}



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