Description
Uncontrolled recursion in XPath evaluation in libxml2 up to and including version 2.9.14 allows a local attacker to cause a stack overflow via crafted expressions. XPath processing functions `xmlXPathRunEval`, `xmlXPathCtxtCompile`, and `xmlXPathEvalExpr` were resetting recursion depth to zero before making potentially recursive calls. When such functions were called recursively this could allow for uncontrolled recursion and lead to a stack overflow. These functions now preserve recursion depth across recursive calls, allowing recursion depth to be controlled.
Affected products
xmlsoft: libxml2
References3
Metrics
- CVSS 3.1
-
5.5
MEDIUM
Score source: NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - EPSS — exploit probability
- 0% percentile: 5 · as of 8 November 2026
- CWE
- CWE-674
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