CVE-2019-15903 — In libexpat before 2

In libexpat before 2.2.8, crafted XML input could fool the parser into changing from DTD parsing to document parsing too early; a consecutive call to XML_GetCurrentLineNumber (or XML_GetCurrentColumnNumber) then resulted in a heap-based buffer over-read.

01What is this vulnerability?

In libexpat before 2.2.8, crafted XML input could fool the parser into changing from DTD parsing to document parsing too early; a consecutive call to XML_GetCurrentLineNumber (or XML_GetCurrentColumnNumber) then resulted in a heap-based buffer over-read.

02Affected products

No structured affected-product list available — see references below for vendor advisories.

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2019-09-04T06:15:10.877
• Last modified: 2026-10-14T07:16:47.100

09References

• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-09/msg00080.html
• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-09/msg00081.html
• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00000.html
• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00002.html
• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00003.html
• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00013.html
• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00016.html
• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00017.html
• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00018.html
• lists.opensuse.org — http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00019.html