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.

Attack Vector Network

Attack Complexity Low

Privileges Required None

Attack Requirements None

User Interaction None

Vulnerable System Confidentiality Impact None

Vulnerable System Integrity Impact None

Vulnerable System Availability Impact High

Subsequent System Confidentiality Impact None

Subsequent System Integrity Impact None

Subsequent System Availability Impact None

Attack Vector Network

Attack Complexity Low

Privileges Required None

Scope Unchanged

Confidentiality Impact None

Integrity Impact None

Availability Impact High

User Interaction None

No CVSS v3.0

No CVSS v2

This CVE is not in the KEV list.

No EPSS score available.

Key SSVC decision points have not yet been added.

Default status is the baseline for the product, each version can override it (e.g. patched versions marked unaffected).

Vendor Product Default status Versions
libexpat project libexpat affected
Version Status Constraints
0 affected ≤ 2.8.3

No data.

No data.

No data.

Project Subscriptions

No data.

Advisories

No advisories yet.

Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.

Workaround

No workaround given by the vendor.

References
Link Providers
https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/pull/1321 cve-icon cve-icon
https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/expat-denial-of-service-via-storeatts-quadratic-complexity cve-icon cve-icon
History

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:30:00 +0000

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'}

Projects

Sign in to view the affected projects.

cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: VulnCheck

Published:

Updated: 2026-08-18T14:10:05.176Z

Reserved: 2026-07-23T20:45:17.817Z

Link: CVE-2026-66046

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-08-18T15:16:57.000

Modified: 2026-08-18T15:16:57.000

Link: CVE-2026-66046

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses