DoS via Stack Overflow in libexpat Recursive Entity Expansion
CVE-2024-8176 Published on March 14, 2025

Libexpat: expat: improper restriction of xml entity expansion depth in libexpat
A stack overflow vulnerability exists in the libexpat library due to the way it handles recursive entity expansion in XML documents. When parsing an XML document with deeply nested entity references, libexpat can be forced to recurse indefinitely, exhausting the stack space and causing a crash. This issue could lead to denial of service (DoS) or, in some cases, exploitable memory corruption, depending on the environment and library usage.

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Vulnerability Analysis

CVE-2024-8176 is exploitable with network access, and does not require authorization privileges or user interaction. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. An automatable proof of concept (POC) exploit exists. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have no impact on confidentiality and integrity, and a high impact on availability.

Attack Vector:
NETWORK
Attack Complexity:
LOW
Privileges Required:
NONE
User Interaction:
NONE
Scope:
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact:
NONE
Integrity Impact:
NONE
Availability Impact:
HIGH

Timeline

Reported to Red Hat.

Made public. 274 days later.

Weakness Type

What is a Stack Exhaustion Vulnerability?

The product does not properly control the amount of recursion which takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack.

CVE-2024-8176 has been classified to as a Stack Exhaustion vulnerability or weakness.


Products Associated with CVE-2024-8176

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Oracle
 
Apple iOS
 
Apple iPadOS
 
Apple iPadOS
 
Apple macOS
 
Apple watchOS
 
Apple tvOS
 
Apple visionOS
 
Red Hat Http Server
 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
 
Red Hat Rhel Aus
 
Red Hat Rhel Tus
 
Red Hat Rhel E4s
 
Red Hat Rhel Eus
 
Red Hat Jboss Core Services
 
Red Hat Devworkspace
 
Red Hat Discovery
 
Red Hat Openshift
 
Red Hat Rhivos
 
Red Hat Rhel Eus Long Life
 

Exploit Probability

EPSS
0.42%
Percentile
61.27%

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.