Rapid7

vulnerability

Ubuntu: USN-7743-1 (CVE-2025-9714): libxml2 vulnerability

Severity
5
CVSS
(AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C)
Published
Sep 4, 2025
Added
Sep 11, 2025
Modified
Apr 16, 2026

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.

Solutions

ubuntu-pro-upgrade-libxml2ubuntu-pro-upgrade-libxml2-devubuntu-pro-upgrade-libxml2-utilsubuntu-upgrade-libxml2ubuntu-upgrade-libxml2-devubuntu-upgrade-libxml2-utils
Title
Rapid7 Labs

2026 Global Threat Landscape Report

The predictive window has collapsed. Exploitation follows disclosure in days. See how attackers are accelerating and how to stay ahead.