CVE-2026-76641
HighCVSS 7.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk29th percentile - higher than 29% of all known CVEs
Summary
Expat through 2.8.3 contains an out-of-bounds read vulnerability that allows attackers to trigger memory corruption by processing XML with external entity parsers created via XML_ExternalEntityParserCreate. A struct size mismatch between ELEMENT_TYPE members causes storeAtts to read the attIndex member past allocated memory boundaries, resulting in failure to normalize whitespace in non-CDATA attributes or a wild pointer dereference causing a segfault. This vulnerability was introduced by the fix for CVE-2026-66046.
Risk Assessment
Processing malicious XML can lead to application crashes or memory corruption, potentially allowing an attacker to compromise data integrity or service availability.
Recommendation
Update the Expat library to a patched version if available. If not, avoid processing untrusted XML with external entities.
Other vulnerabilities in Expat
See all- CVE-2022-25315Critical
In Expat (aka libexpat) before 2.4.5, there is an integer overflow in storeRawNames.
- CVE-2022-25314High
In Expat (libexpat) before 2.4.5, there is an integer overflow in copyString.
- CVE-2022-25236Critical
In xmlparse.c in Expat (aka libexpat) before 2.4.5, attackers can insert namespace-separator characters into namespace URIs.
- CVE-2022-25235Critical
In xmltok_impl.c in Expat (aka libexpat) before 2.4.5 lacks certain validation of encoding, such as checks for whether a UTF-8 character is valid in a certain context.
- CVE-2022-23990High
Expat (libexpat) before 2.4.4 has an integer overflow in the doProlog function. This may lead to improper XML parser behavior.
- CVE-2022-23852Critical
Expat (aka libexpat) before 2.4.4 has a signed integer overflow in XML_GetBuffer, for configurations with a nonzero XML_CONTEXT_BYTES.
- CVE-2022-22824Critical
The defineAttribute function in xmlparse.c in Expat (libexpat) before 2.4.3 has an integer overflow. This may lead to incorrect behavior of the XML parser.
- CVE-2022-22823Critical
The build_model function in xmlparse.c in Expat (libexpat) before 2.4.3 has an integer overflow. This may lead to incorrect behavior of the XML parser.
- CVE-2022-22822Critical
addBinding in xmlparse.c in Expat (aka libexpat) before 2.4.3 has an integer overflow.
- CVE-2021-45960High
In Expat (libexpat) before 2.4.3, a left shift by 29 or more bits in the storeAtts function in xmlparse.c can lead to realloc misbehavior, such as allocating too few bytes or only freeing memory.
Original NVD description (English source)
Expat through 2.8.3 contains an out-of-bounds read vulnerability that allows attackers to trigger memory corruption by processing XML with external entity parsers created via XML_ExternalEntityParserCreate. A struct size mismatch between ELEMENT_TYPE members causes storeAtts to read the attIndex member past allocated memory boundaries, resulting in failure to normalize whitespace in non-CDATA attributes or a wild pointer dereference causing a segfault. This vulnerability was introduced by the fix for CVE-2026-66046.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS