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CentOS Linux 7 [TuxCare] Security Update: expat / expat-devel / expat-static (CENTOS7:CLSA-2026:1790239757)

high Nessus Plugin ID 353319

Synopsis

The CentOS Linux host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

The CentOS Linux 7 host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the TuxCare CENTOS7:CLSA-2026:1790239757 advisory.

 - 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. (CVE-2026-66046)

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the affected packages based on the guidance in TuxCare advisory CENTOS7:CLSA-2026:1790239757.

See Also

https://cve.tuxcare.com/els/releases/CLSA-2026:1790239757

http://www.nessus.org/u?9fde9789

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 353319

File Name: tuxcare_centos_7_CLSA-2026-1790239757.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Published: 9/30/2026

Updated: 9/30/2026

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Continuous Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3

Percentile: 23.62

Vendor

Vendor Severity: Important

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 6.1

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-66046

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.7

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:P/RL:O/RC:C

CVSS v4

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.7

Threat Score: 7.7

Threat Vector: CVSS:4.0/E:P

Vector: 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

Vulnerability Information

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/CentOS/release, Host/CentOS/rpm-list, Host/OS/extended-third-party

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 9/24/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/18/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-66046

CLSA: 2026:1790239757