Bugtraq: Security advisory - Xerces-C++ 2.5.0: Attribute blowup

From: Amit Klein (AKsecurity) <aksecurity_at_hotpop.com>
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 19:25:28 +0200

***
*** Security Advisory
***

***
*** Xerces-C++ 2.5.0: Attribute blowup denial-of-service
***

*** Author: Amit Klein

*** Release Date: October 2nd, 2004

*** Description:
An attacker can craft a malicious XML document, which uses XML
attributes in a way that inflicts a denial of service condition
on the target machine (XML parser).
The result of this attack is that the XML parser consumes all the CPU

resources for a long period of time (from seconds to minutes,
depending on the size of the payload).
In our experiments, we were able to send attacks (of few hunderd KBs)

that caused the target machines to consume 100% CPU for several
minutes.

*** Vendor status
Vendor was contacted, and a fix was included for the newly released
version of Xerces-C++ (2.6.0).

*** Solution:
Upgrade to Xerces-C++ 2.6.0
Received on Oct 02 2004