SUSE SLES11 Security Update : libxml2 (SUSE-SU-2016:1205-1)

high Nessus Plugin ID 90886

Synopsis

The remote SUSE host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

This update for libxml2 fixes two security issues :

- libxml2 limits the number of recursions an XML document can contain so to protect against the 'Billion Laughs' denial-of-service attack. Unfortunately, the underlying counter was not incremented properly in all necessary locations. Therefore, specially crafted XML documents could exhaust all available stack space and crash the XML parser without running into the recursion limit.
This vulnerability has been fixed. (bsc#975947)

- When running in recovery mode, certain invalid XML documents would trigger an infinite recursion in libxml2 that ran until all stack space was exhausted. This vulnerability could have been used to facilitate a denial-of-sevice attack. (CVE-2016-3627, bsc#972335)

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the SUSE security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Solution

To install this SUSE Security Update use YaST online_update.
Alternatively you can run the command listed for your product :

SUSE Linux Enterprise Software Development Kit 11-SP4 :

zypper in -t patch sdksp4-libxml2-12538=1

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11-SP4 :

zypper in -t patch slessp4-libxml2-12538=1

SUSE Linux Enterprise Debuginfo 11-SP4 :

zypper in -t patch dbgsp4-libxml2-12538=1

To bring your system up-to-date, use 'zypper patch'.

See Also

https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=972335

https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=975947

https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2016-3627/

http://www.nessus.org/u?3c0bd963

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 90886

File Name: suse_SU-2016-1205-1.nasl

Version: 2.12

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 5/4/2016

Updated: 1/19/2021

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Temporal Score: 3.7

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:libxml2, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:libxml2-doc, p-cpe:/a:novell:suse_linux:libxml2-python, cpe:/o:novell:suse_linux:11

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, Host/SuSE/release, Host/SuSE/rpm-list

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 5/3/2016

Vulnerability Publication Date: 5/17/2016

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2016-3627