CVE-2026-66046

Expat Denial of Service via storeAtts() Quadratic Complexity

Published Aug 18, 2026 CVSS 4.0 · 8.7 High EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
Description
Expat through 2.8.3 contains a denial of service vulnerability caused by quadratic algorithmic complexity in the storeAtts() function in xmlparse.c, where processing N specified attributes with non-normalized values triggers an O(N^2) linear scan of elementType->defaultAtts to determine CDATA status. A remote unauthenticated attacker can supply a single well-formed XML document of a few megabytes to an application parsing untrusted XML to cause excessive CPU consumption, resulting in denial of service without requiring authentication, external entity resolution, or non-default parser options.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
Debian DLA Debian DLA DLA-4807-1 expat security update
Debian DSA Debian DSA DSA-6566-1 expat security update
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:libexpat_project:libexpat:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'yes', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Libexpat Project
Libexpat Project libexpat
Vendors & Products Libexpat Project
Libexpat Project libexpat
Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Expat through 2.8.3 contains a denial of service vulnerability caused by quadratic algorithmic complexity in the storeAtts() function in xmlparse.c, where processing N specified attributes with non-normalized values triggers an O(N^2) linear scan of elementType->defaultAtts to determine CDATA status. A remote unauthenticated attacker can supply a single well-formed XML document of a few megabytes to an application parsing untrusted XML to cause excessive CPU consumption, resulting in denial of service without requiring authentication, external entity resolution, or non-default parser options.
Title Expat Denial of Service via storeAtts() Quadratic Complexity
Weaknesses CWE-407
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 7.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}

cvssV4_0

{'score': 8.7, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N'}

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
VulnCheck
Published
Updated
Nov 10, 2026, 12:49 PM
Reserved
Jul 23, 2026, 8:45 PM
Status
Modified
Published
Aug 18, 2026, 3:16 PM
Modified
Nov 10, 2026, 1:19 PM